By Pam Killeen |PamKilleen.com

Katie Pasitney, spokeswoman for Universal Ostrich Farms in Edgewood, B.C., says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) told her that migratory birds likely contaminated her farm’s drinking pond—now the basis for ordering her entire flock of ostriches to be destroyed.

On December 31, 2024, lab tests on two ostrich carcasses came back positive for H5, later confirmed H5N1. The CFIA then invoked its stamping-out policy and ordered the flock depopulated. In all, 69 birds died during the December–January outbreak; since mid-January 2025, there have been no reported deaths and the surviving flock has been described in court materials as healthy for months. Under CFIA’s approach, once a premises is declared infected or exposed, all birds are slated for depopulation—the policy does not provide for re-testing survivors to spare individuals.

The question is obvious: if virus-carrying wild birds contaminated the pond, why is the hammer falling on the ostriches? They’re victims, not vectors—and aiming at them lets upstream environmental sources off the hook.

What Recent Fieldwork Shows

New field research from California’s dairy hot spots should be a wake-up call. On 14 H5N1-affected dairies, scientists found infectious H5N1 in milking-parlour air during milking and viral RNA throughout the wastewater stream, with infectious virus in some wastewater samples—including manure lagoons that migratory birds visit.

Industrial processes can aerosolize and concentrate virus, and lagoons can feed it back to wildlife, creating a plausible bridge from factory-farm operations to smallholdings like Universal Ostrich Farms.

It’s a System Problem, Not a One-Off

Industrial livestock systems generate enormous volumes of untreated waste, stored in open lagoons or spread on fields. Factory Farm Nation 2024 estimates 1.7 billion confined animals in the U.S. producing ~941 billion pounds of manure each year. Storms and floods routinely overwhelm lagoons, flushing pollution—and potentially pathogens—into waterways. If regulators are serious about stopping environmental transmission, this is where they should focus first.

British Columbia—Reacting, Not Solving

B.C.’s own records show repeated avian-flu clusters in the Fraser Valley. The usual response—“cull everything nearby”—makes headlines, not progress. CFIA’s public AI (Avian Influenza) guidance does not require upstream environmental controls like lagoon covers, wastewater treatment, or air monitoring in milking parlours. That policy gap leaves the main environmental reservoirs largely unaddressed while small farms face culls. Killing healthy ostriches without first testing and fixing upstream sources isn’t just shortsighted. It’s scientifically reckless.

Culling Survivors Defies Common Sense

Even more misguided is the notion of culling animals that survive an illness. When a person recovers from a bad cold or flu, we see their recovery as resilience, not a biohazard. The same principle should apply to animals. In fact, a University of British Columbia expert provided an affidavit confirming that these ostriches have developed immunity to avian flu.

You, the reader, have probably had a bad cold or flu—should that mean you should be culled too? The absurdity of the question itself exposes how irrational blanket culls of healthy survivors truly are.

Scale Magnifies Risk—Small Farms Pay the Price

The biggest danger of factory farming isn’t just pollution—it’s the overwhelming scale of these operations. When outbreaks hit huge complexes, big firms usually survive the shock. Small family farms don’t. The trend is stark: 733,000 farms in 1941 has fallen to 189,874 farms in 2021. Heavy-handed stamping-out policies accelerate that decline, pushing out the very farms trying to do things right.

A Source-First Plan

• Test the environment and publish the data. Sample ponds, sump pits, fields irrigated with wastewater, and manure lagoons. Publish results transparently.
• Monitor the air where exposure occurs. Use validated samplers in milking parlours and downwind sites. If virus is present, focus on respiratory protection, disinfection, and wastewater treatment.
• Limit wildlife access to contaminated sites. Require deterrents or covers for lagoons, upgrade waste handling, and set measurable treatment standards.

Do the Right Things—in the Right Order

This isn’t a plea to do nothing. It’s a plea to do the right things in the right order. If CFIA can prove the ostriches are infected through proper testing, it has a case. But if evidence points to industrial air and wastewater as the drivers, then culling a pond-drinking flock is both cruel and counterproductive.

Keep Your Eye on the Source

Until we confront open manure lagoons and airborne contamination from industrial systems, culling ostriches will do nothing to protect public health. What it will do is destroy one more small, independent farm while the true sources remain untouched.

We don’t need more scapegoats. We need smarter policy.

It’s time for the CFIA to stop the cull, rethink its strategy, and target the real sources of infection—like open manure lagoons, contaminated air, and industrial waste streams.

Pam Killeen is a health coach, podcaster, and co-author of the New York Times bestselling book The Great Bird Flu Hoax (2006). She writes and speaks extensively on health, nutrition, and systemic corruption in science and public policy.

Sources

1) We Animals. (2023, August 23). New report explores the role of factory farming in the spread of avian influenza. We Animals Media.

2) Campbell, A. J., et al. (2025). Surveillance on California dairy farms reveals multiple sources of H5N1 transmission [preprint]. bioRxiv.

3) Schnirring, L. (2025, August 4). Air, wastewater may play roles in H5N1 transmission on dairy farms. CIDRAP News.

4) Feed Strategy Staff. (2025, August 15). Study eyes air, wastewater as source of H5N1 transmission on dairy farms. Feed Strategy.

5) Food & Water Watch. (2024, September 21). Factory Farm Nation: 2024 Edition. Food & Water Watch.

6) Government of British Columbia – Ministry of Agriculture & Food. (2023, December 14). Avian influenza now detected at more than 50 farms (Information Bulletin). BC Gov News.

7) Statistics Canada. (2022, May 11). Land use, Census of Agriculture historical data (Table 32‑10‑0153‑01; formerly CANSIM 004‑0002). Statistics Canada.

8) Mehler Paperny, A. (2025, September 24). Canada pauses cull of ostrich flock that had cases of avian flu amid U.S. push to save them. Reuters.

9) Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). (2025, May 31). Basis for applying disease control measures at an avian influenza infected ostrich farm. CFIA.

10) Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). (2023, August 2). Cleaning and disinfection: avian influenza. CFIA.

11) The Canadian Press. (2025, Sept 22). A timeline of the fight to save a flock of ostriches in a B.C. farm. Halifax CityNews. (Dec 31, 2024: two carcasses H5→H5N1; Jan 15: last death; total 69.)

12) Global News / MacGillivray, K. (2025, Sept 6). Hundreds of B.C. ostriches given temporary reprieve from cull. (Court filing: “healthy for >230 days; last death mid‑January”).

Originally published at pamkilleen.com