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Posted on 01/11/2026 9:27:07 AM PST by Twotone
Like many of us, Katie Pasitney entered the new year with a resolution.
Hers, however, is not personal or private, but public and political: to hold the Canadian government accountable for what it did to her family, their farm, and the more than 300 ostriches whose blood still stains their British Columbia property.
Pasitney recently spoke to Align after what she calls the worst Christmas season of her life — describing weeks of shock, trauma, and severe depression in the wake of the government's November 6 culling of Universal Ostrich Farms' entire herd.
Death sentence
The culling was the sad and brutal end to a nearly year-long legal fight — one that thrust Pasitney into the spotlight as the farm’s spokesperson, making her case in widely shared, self-produced videos.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency ordered the birds killed under its “stamping out” policy after a possible case of avian influenza in December 2024. After a brief pause that gave the farm hope that the order might be reconsidered, the CFIA formally rejected an exemption request on January 10, 2025 — roughly a month before the federal government announced the purchase of 500,000 avian influenza vaccines.
From that point on, the walls began to close in on Pasitney and her mother, Karen Espersen, co-owner of the farm. The two spent much of the year fighting the CFIA in court, accumulating legal bills while the federal government racked up legal victories. Throughout the ordeal, the playing field appeared tilted: The government was largely permitted to advance a single argument — that the cull must proceed because it had already been ordered.
Doomed fight
Prominent Americans including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr. Mehmet Oz, and businessman John Catsimatidis publicly supported the farm. Despite political pressure and repeated questions in Parliament about the CFIA’s handling of the case, federal ministers consistently deferred to the agency and the courts as the legal process unfolded.
To Pasitney and her supporters, it often seemed as if Ottawa was content to let lawfare grind the family down.
It did not matter, Pasitney argues, that the birds showed signs of herd immunity. It did not matter that there was no evidence of disease for months. The CFIA refused to conduct further testing. After the farm lost its appeal in federal court, CFIA officials arrived on Sept. 23, took control of the property, and prepared to carry out the kill.
The Supreme Court of Canada briefly intervened, agreeing to hear an appeal and issuing a temporary stay. But CFIA officials remained on site with what they described as “custody” of the ostriches. Over the next seven weeks, Pasitney and her supporters documented what they say was harassment and mistreatment of the birds by CFIA inspectors. Independent counts showed the ostrich population continuing to decline.
Into the 'kill pen'
On November 6, the Supreme Court declined to intervene further. The execution could proceed.
That evening and into the early hours of Nov. 7, CFIA marksmen shot hundreds of ostriches while Pasitney and her supporters looked on. It took roughly 1,000 rounds to kill the herd.
Even after the slaughter, the CFIA maintained a quarantine over the property. The family was not permitted to retrieve spent shell casings or remove hay bales used to construct what Pasitney calls a “kill pen.”
Raw memories
I spoke with Pasitney on Jan. 3 in a video interview from the farm in Edgewood, British Columbia, which still resembles a war zone. She is seeking to have the quarantine lifted so cleanup can begin, but she is equally focused on holding the CFIA — and the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney — accountable.
The memories remain raw. Pasitney describes the cull as “one of the biggest heinous acts of animal cruelty probably in Canadian history,” saying the ostriches were forced to witness one another being shot “in fear and panic for hours,” while her family endured what she characterizes as 11 months of state-sanctioned intimidation.
Suppressing the science?
Demonstrating the science, she says, was always her goal. “They suppressed our real science,” Pasitney argues. “There was no testing for almost 300 days. There was no surveillance, no proof of active disease — and still they came in and they stripped us of our freedoms.”
She also questions how the agency handled biosecurity on the ground. CFIA officials maintained that their protocols required full protective equipment only in designated quarantine or “hot” zones, a distinction that allowed inspectors, police, and contractors outside those zones to operate without hazmat suits or full PPE. To Pasitney, that contrast — between claims of an ongoing viral threat and what she observed on site — raises serious doubts.
“There was no viral threat,” she says. “Show us proof of active illness.”
“It is clear that there was never a quarantine,” Pasitney adds. “They would have disinfected their vehicles. They would have worn consistent PPE. They would have had a certified company handling biohazardous waste. They wouldn’t have left our animals killed out in the field overnight. ... They definitely wouldn't have left this hay-bale mess out there, littered with blood, littered with shell casings. There's no quarantine. Let's just be honest. This was all a theatrical display of punishment for using our voices.”
Pasitney further alleges that not all ostriches were destroyed during the operation, claiming some birds were removed from the property. “They stole our science,” she says. “They stole ostriches.” She urges anyone with information about their whereabouts to come forward.
'Wake up'
Pasitney insists her fight was never just about one farm.
“Our poor farmers are under attack everywhere across our country,” Pasitney says.
By accountability, she means a full reckoning: review of CFIA outbreak protocols, recognition of farmers’ rights, and an end to what she calls one-size-fits-all policies like stamping out.
She is now working to organize a national federation for farmers — one that, she says, will ask basic but urgent questions: Who protects the people who feed the country? Who holds regulators to account?
Pasitney is reluctant to talk about fundraising but says she has little choice. The quarantine, she notes, eliminated all income: no product sales, no tours, no feathers, no eggshells — nothing.
“At the end of the day,” she says, “the government still stripped us from absolutely everything. And we are fighting."
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Seriously??? There is a place on earth where ostriches do not belong... That place is Canada. The harsh winters aren’t for every bird.
Nevertheless, they had a working farm, & were apparently making a living at it. And the gov’t destroyed it for no good reason.
British Columbia, 300 ostriches killed. They have gone too far. I didn’t know ostriches could live in BC.
This killing reminds me of when Bidens feds killed all those cattle out west. I remember a picture of a crane hauling a cow carcass away. The cow was in the process of giving birth.
Trump is a dictator for doing this!!!
Oops. It was Canada.
EC
You can bet if the Conservatives were in power in Canada there would be a huge uproar over this.
If the Conservatives were in power, it probably would not have happened.
That is why we have the second amendment. The birds vaccinated will spread their poison to those who consume products, and natural immunity can never take hold.
If 1/3rd die, 1/3 never get sick, and the other 1/3rd are immune. They pass on the immunity to the offspring.
Get back to me when they find species wiped out by disease. Osrich, chickens and Turkeys have existed for millenia without vaccination, just like human. Then again, 90% of people took the Covid shot, get the Flu shot every year, and pepper their children with 72+ shots, beginning at birth.
"A possible case of avian influenza?"
"POSSIBLE?"
And that justifies destroying a business and killing birds that live for decades and were treated more like family pets than farm animals?
I hope you never come down with "a possible case" of some imaginary disease that requires forced injections of experimental magic potions.
I figure these bird “vaccines” are a roundabout way to get the RNA crap into people who refused to take the Covid vax.
Where are the animal rights people?
This article is entirely one-sided and because the author made no effort to interview anyone on the other side of the case, I doubt there is much truth in it.
It sounds like there were disease losses and the owners attempted to hide the losses by discarding or processing the ccarcasses, later claiming the missing birds were secretly and mysteriously “taken.”
Before jumping to conclusions find and read the court documents and evidence.
The people who do this kind of thing have addresses.
I’m just saying.
L
If you're that stupid, you don't belong on this website......
The other side of the argument is the Canadian Government.........And that's already been identified as bullshit.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oTdPouuMe_4
So who you gonna believe fool, an honest Canadian business owner or the soon to be Marxist Canadian government?
I’ve been following this story for a while, & no, this is certainly THEIR side, but it pretty accurately states what they’ve been dealing with.
And the missing ostriches were taken by the gov’t - they didn’t hide them:
Pasitney further alleges that not all ostriches were destroyed during the operation, claiming some birds were removed from the property. “They stole our science,” she says. “They stole ostriches.”
“...Where are the animal rights people...?”
If they’re like most of the animal “rights” people I dealt with over 30+ years of various animal-care occupations, they would be very much on the side of the CFIA on this, saying that the cull was a “regrettable but necessary” reality that was the end-result of removing wild animals from the wild, and enslaving them in human captivity, blah blah blah...
It gets back to the whole idea of so-called “Dignified Extinction” for animals in captivity.
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