Originally published by Pam Killeen: September 26, 2025
wrong goal
Katie Pasitney, a spokeswoman for Universal Ostrich Farms in Edgewood, B.C., said the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) told her migratory birds had likely contaminated her farm’s drinking water ponds, which is now the basis for an order to destroy her entire ostrich flock. said.
On December 31, 2024, laboratory tests on two ostrich carcasses tested positive for H5, which was later confirmed as H5N1. The CFIA then triggered an extermination policy and ordered the herd’s population to be reduced. A total of 69 birds died during the December-January outbreak. No deaths have been reported since mid-January 2025, and court documents describe the surviving herd as healthy for several months.
Under CFIA’s approach, once a facility is declared infected or exposed, the population of all birds in that facility is scheduled to be reduced. This policy does not provide for re-examination of survivors to spare individuals.
The question is clear. If the pond was contaminated by virus-carrying wild birds, why would the hammer fall on the ostrich? They are victims, not vectors (disease carriers or spreaders). And targeting them can take you beyond your upstream environmental sources.
Recent field survey results
New field research from California’s dairy hotspots should sound a wake-up call. At 14 dairy farms infected with H5N1, scientists found infectious H5N1 in the milking parlor air during milking, found viral RNA throughout wastewater streams, and found infectious virus in some wastewater samples, including from manure ponds visited by migratory birds.
Simply put, industrial processes can aerosolize and concentrate viruses, and lagoons can feed them back to wildlife, creating a plausible bridge from factory farm operations to small farms like Universal Ostrich Farms.
This is a systemic problem, not a one-time problem.
Industrial livestock farming systems generate huge amounts of untreated waste, which is stored in open lagoons or spread over fields. Factory Farm Nation 2024 estimates that 1.7 billion captive animals in the U.S. produce about 941 billion pounds of manure each year, much of it unprocessed. Storms and floods routinely overwhelm lagoons, flushing pollutants and potential pathogens into waterways. If regulators are serious about stopping environmental transmission, this should be their first focus.
BC — respond, not solve
B.C.’s own records show repeated outbreaks of avian flu in the Fraser Valley. The common response, “Gather everything nearby,” generates headlines, not progress.
When infectious viruses are present in the milking parlor air and farm wastewater frequented by migratory birds, the real response begins at the top. That means identifying and correcting the source of contamination, then taking specific steps to prevent environmental spread (e.g., treating wastewater before on-site use, covering or sealing manure ponds, keeping wild birds out of contaminated areas, and filtering the air in barns and parlors).
To be precise about the policy: CFIA’s public AI (avian influenza) guidance focuses on population reduction, movement control, biosecurity, cleaning and disinfection. There is no need for upstream environmental controls such as lagoon caps, wastewater treatment or air monitoring in the milking parlor.
This policy gap leaves major environmental reservoirs largely unaddressed and small farms facing extinction. Killing seemingly healthy ostriches without first testing and correcting the upstream source is not just short-sighted. This is scientifically reckless.
Weeded Survivors Ignore Common Sense
What is even more wrong is the concept of culling animals that survive the disease. Such a policy goes against both logic and basic science. When someone recovers from a bad cold or flu, we perceive their recovery as a sign of resilience and return to health, rather than as a biological hazard that needs to be eliminated. The same principles should apply to other living things. Ostriches (or any animal) that overcome an infection show natural resilience and may even have antibodies that make them less of a threat in the future.
In fact, an expert at the University of British Columbia provided an affidavit proving that the surviving ostriches developed immunity to avian flu. This emphasizes how meaningless culling is. You, the reader, have probably caught a bad cold or flu. Does that mean you too should be eliminated? The absurdity of the question itself reveals how irrational it is to cull healthy survivors en masse.
Scale magnifies risk – small farms pay the price
The greatest risk of factory farming is not just pollution, but the overwhelming scale of these operations. When avian flu affects a large egg or poultry complex, mass depopulation ripples through the supply chain, but larger companies usually survive the shock. Small family farms don’t have that buffer.
The long-term trend is clear. This has decreased from approximately 733,000 farms in 1941 to 189,874 farms in 2021. Coercive eradication policies accelerate this decline, crowding out small, independent operations and, often, farms themselves trying to do the right thing. These farms feed their neighbors, support local economies, and steward the land. We need more, not less.
Source First Plan
Test your environment and publish your data. Samples of H5N1 RNA and infectious virus are collected from ostrich ponds (inflow/outflow), nearby drains, fields irrigated with recycled wastewater, and manure lagoons. Post Ct values, culture results, and chain of care. This mirrors the California Protocol and confirms or excludes environmental pathways associated with industrial waste streams.
Monitor the air where exposure occurs. Use a proven air sampler in a nearby milking parlor and upwind location. If infectious viruses are present during milking, aim to mitigate where transmission actually occurs: respiratory and eye protection, rigorous disinfection of milking equipment, safe handling/disposal of contaminated milk, and wastewater treatment before field use.
Restrict wildlife access to contaminated areas. Require deterrents or covers if you attract migratory birds to your lagoon, upgrade waste disposal, and set measurable treatment standards. Leaving the system in place while small farms slaughter their birds is regulatory theater, not public health.
Do the right things – in the right order.
I am not asking you to do nothing. It is a plea to do the right things in the right order. It would be a stronger case if CFIA could show recent farm-specific evidence that ostriches were infected, based on proper sampling and clear documentation. But if there is evidence that industrial air and wastewater are the cause of environmental pollution, mass culling of herds drinking from ponds is cruel and counterproductive.
keep an eye on the source
Slaughtering ostriches will do nothing to protect public health until we confront the open manure ponds and air pollution that comes from industrial livestock farming systems. Viruses cannot be stopped. It doesn’t make British Columbians or our farms any safer.
What it will do is destroy one more small, independent operation while leaving the actual source of the infection intact.
We don’t need any more scapegoats. We need smarter policies. It is time for CFIA to stop culling, rethink its strategy, and target the real sources of infection: open manure reservoirs, polluted air, and industrial waste streams.
About the author
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 lectures extensively on systemic corruption in health, nutrition, science, and public policy.
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