Posted on 06/09/2025 5:12:24 PM PDT by Twotone
A pair of farmers go up against bird flu hysteria and government overreach.
MAHA Man to the rescue?
Hundreds of healthy ostriches owned by a small family farm in Canada are marked for death — unless U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can win them a stay of execution.
Karen Espersen and Dave Bilinski's Universal Ostrich Farms in the Kootenay region of British Columbia has become an international touchstone for hysteria over avian flu, government overreach, and the property rights of farmers. Cull me, maybe
On Dec. 19, 2024, the couple noticed that one of their ostriches had symptoms of what appeared to be pneumonia. That bird recovered, but 69 other ostriches, introduced to the farm after 2020, died of apparent avian influenza.
Just under two weeks later, federal agents from the Canada Food Inspection Agency descended upon the farm to conduct tests on two of the dead ostriches. When they confirmed bird flu as the cause, they issued a cull order for the remaining 399 birds to be killed.
This is in keeping with the CFIA's policy of "stamping out" any bird populations in which avian flu is detected.
Yet Espersen and Bilinski claim that there have been no further incidences of sickness, something they credit to natural herd immunity. The CFIA, however, ignored their requests to have the healthy birds tested. MAHA on a mission
Universal Ostrich Farms' lawyer argues that the CFIA has no reason to order the cull, as the farm's ostriches are not raised for their meat. Instead, their genes are used in valuable antibody studies.
When Espersen and Bilinski conducted their own testing, a local veterinarian identified the cause of death as resulting from pseudomonas, a bacteria that can be found in soil and water. This prompted the CFIA to issue an order restricting the farm owners from conducting any further testing at the risk of receiving a $200,000 fine and six months in jail.
It was then that Espersen and Bilinski's daughter Katie Pasitney — who has since become the farm's spokesperson — reached out to RFK Jr., who immediately responded to the farmers’ plight. The Make America Healthy Again architect sent a letter to the CFIA, urging the Canadian government to allow science and not politics to govern its decision about culling the ostriches.
“It’s our hope that this collaboration will help us understand how to better protect human and animal populations and perhaps lead to the development of new vaccines and therapeutics,” Kennedy said in a post to X accompanying the letter, reported by a host of mainstream media. Stay of execution?
That letter apparently moved Canadian Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald, because he announced that the government was reconsidering its decision to kill the birds. But he has been silent since that announcement.
Since then, it has been a standoff between the CFIA and the farm, where about 50 journalists and activists are camping out in order to dissuade the government from killing the birds.
Speaking to Align on Wednesday, Pasitney said she is attempting to enlist a host of prominent people to express their support for the farm in person.
“We were inviting Elon Musk and we were inviting RFK out, trying to get that word out there a little bit more with education and awareness about how big this issue is. … RFK is still monitoring the issue, as well as Dr. Oz. So that is kind of an interesting situation."
Pasitney said the number of people staying at the farm fluctuates from 50 during the week to over 100 on the weekends.
“Just this last weekend, we had over 200 here. ... People come and go and take pictures of the big, beautiful, prehistoric ostriches. And it's really nice to be able to meet so many kind people who all ... feel like we deserve the change that we're fighting for,” she tells Blaze Media. Like a thief in the night
According to Pastiney, communication with the CFIA is not so open.
“We don't even personally hear from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency any more. They don't email. … There's no communication [except via] a media release that they went and sent out to all the media,” Pasitney said.
The CFIA's message, however, remains chillingly clear: The culling could happen at any time.
"You can imagine the shock and trauma and the anxiety that a family would feel, living on the edge of their seat every day, not knowing if they're going to show up. … I guess they hire vendors to do it, but what thugs could show up to kill your almost 400 animals that you've raised for 35 years?”
But for Pasitney and her parents, this goes beyond the personal.
Not only does the "stamping out" policy destroy the livelihood of farmers, said Pasitney, it's also tampering with nature's built-in mechanism for controlling pandemics.
“We're wiping out natural immunity, herd immunity, which has existed for millions of years," said Pasitney. "If we do lose our natural immunity, we're setting ourselves up for a catastrophic bad chain of events in the future."
What power does RFK, Jr. have over Canadian policies in this regard?
Get the activists out of there. They are state sponsored and will take this farm down.
"This prompted the CFIA to issue an order restricting the farm owners fromI bet the CFIA guy has a "In this house we believe in science" yard sign. The Left is always, always, trying to cover up evidence. What harm is there in testing?
conducting any further testing at the risk of receiving a $200,000 fine and
six months in jail."
Publicity Power in the court of public opinion.
Bureaucrats hate the spotlight when they are caught power tripping.
Canada is doing the bidding of Big Pharma, because these birds are generating antibodies for birds to innoculate against bird flu.
Big Pharma wants to sell vaccines to farms.
Herd immunity as a scientific concept was clearly targeted, during the 2020-2022 Global Mass Psychosis Event, to be “disappeared” down the COVID 19(84) Memory Hole.
Surely the same mendacious motivation is at play here?
If a bird survives, it may pass immunity to its offspring, I would assume.
I don’t think we like it much when Canadians assert the same tactics to influence our own agricultural policies.
There’s enough for RFK, Jr. to solve here.
All the crunchy Canadians are on board with MAHA.
There is no such thing as bad publicity.
Shine the light on the cockroaches and watch them scurry.
That, and the antibodies are then sold to other farms.
I think Liberty’s Lemu Emu should take a trip to BC and campaign for the safety of these poor ostriches. Even though, Lemu isn’t an ostrich, his support and squawk for the ostriches would be beneficial in saving ALL birds from this needless slaughter by the globalists, their leftist pawns, pharmaceutical companies and their evil genetically engineered bird flu virus research.
So, you’re in favor of ‘crunchies’ opposing their own governments?
Funny; when the ‘crunchies’ - especially the environmental ones - do that here, I don’t see a lot of FR support.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
I happen to agree that the flock culling policy is stupid. Destroying survivors is how you lose superior genetics and novel antibodies.
“What power does RFK, Jr. have over Canadian policies in this regard?”
Presumably none, of course! Maybe he’ll just personally adopt them all and poor Cheryl Hines’s head will explode!
Read a great interview with him last year (forget where, I should try and find it). He was interviewed by a friend who is a writer, so it wasn’t so unbiased, but it was really a good piece. And he told about an emu that he had, and how it loved him, and how Cheryl hated it. Hilarious.
..........”People come and go and take pictures of the big, beautiful, prehistoric ostriches. “
They are big and beautiful, No need to kill them. Just keep people away for awhile.
In a perfect Woke world, all preborn and born would be culled if genes or parenthood indicated they could develop Christian, conservative values or already showed symptoms of such.
What power does RFK, Jr. have over Canadian policies in this regard?
Only the power of the Bully Pulpit. Draw public attention & try to make them back down.
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