How A Canadian Ostrich Farm Sparked a Far-Right Crusade

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A B.C. ostrich farm fighting an order to kill its 400 birds has become a flashpoint for the far right and people skeptical of both mainstream science and the regulatory powers of governments.

The cull at Universal Ostrich in Edgewood, about 100 kilometres southeast of Vernon, was ordered to prevent the spread of avian flu after birds were infected.

A volunteer researcher with a grassroots group called Unmask the Right says he’s concerned about the involvement of high-profile convoy protesters and people who have threatened violence. Even U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has attacked the cull.

The rhetoric has intensified in the wake of a Federal Court ruling that allows the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA, to proceed with the animal cull to prevent the spread of avian flu.

The researcher sent The Tyee a Facebook post by James Sowery, an Alberta man convicted of assault with a weapon related to his actions at the Coutts border protest in 2022, when he drove his truck at an RCMP officer.

In response to Sowery’s AI-generated picture of an army-helmeted ostrich with the tag line “Save our ostriches,” B.C. commenters have called a federal judge “evil” for ruling Tuesday that the CFIA’s cull of the ostrich flock could go ahead. One called for “the gallows” to be brought back so people could watch the government officials who made the decision “draw their last breaths.”

Several commenters envisioned themselves dying to defend the farm, while others referred to the television show Yellowstone and a plot line involving an isolated canyon outside of government jurisdiction where characters on the show kill enemies or dispose of bodies.

“The key organizers have repeatedly called for their supporters to keep things peaceful, but the online talk among a significant number of those supporters has been anything but,” said the researcher, whom The Tyee is quoting anonymously because he fears harassment or violence.

“People have been talking about peaceful protest being ineffective, strapping up and joining the party, grabbing their weapons and blocking the road,” he said. “The situation has become increasingly volatile over the last 24 hours since the court's decision came down, and the potential for this conflict to intensify is very real."

Karen Esperson, the owner of Universal Ostrich, has called for supporters to come and surround the farm to prevent the cull from happening.

The Tyee asked the farm spokesperson, Esperson’s daughter Katie Pasitney, about the comments on Sowery’s post but did not receive a response by our deadline.

On an advocacy Facebook page called Save Our Ostriches, Pasitney has been asking supporters to use normal democratic methods to protest the decision, such as writing to the Regional District of Central Kootenay to ask them to refuse to accept the birds’ bodies in its landfill.

In a Monday post, Pasitney wrote that “the views and beliefs expressed by individuals posting on behalf of Universal Ostrich Farms Inc. may not always fully reflect the official stance, values, or mission of our farm.”

Pasitney’s family has been breeding ostriches on the farm, located in a rural area on the west shore of Lower Arrow Lake, since the 1990s. In emotional videos, Pasitney and Esperson have talked about their fear and sadness at the prospect of losing the animals.

According to the Federal Court’s ruling, Universal Ostrich’s troubles started in December, when around 20 to 30 ostriches got sick and died. After an anonymous report to the CFIA, inspectors showed up and tested two of the dead birds. Those tests showed the animals had been infected with avian flu, likely spread by wild ducks who had landed at the farm shortly before the ostriches became sick.

A current outbreak of avian flu, or H5N1, has affected poultry farms across Canada and the United States. The disease caused one 13-year-old in the Metro Vancouver area to become critically ill in 2024.

After the results of their tests on two of the ostriches, the CFIA ordered the entire flock of around 400 birds to be killed in order to contain the outbreak.

An ostrich looks at the camera, with more birds in the background.

But Universal Ostrich applied for an exemption, arguing that their ostriches have special antibodies that could be used to fight various diseases and unique genetic characteristics.

The farm bases that claim on their work with Japanese scientist Yasuhiro Tsukamoto, a veterinary professor and president of Kyoto Prefectural University, who is so fascinated by ostriches that he goes by the moniker “Dr. Ostrich.”

In an interview with the Canadian Press, Tsukamoto confirmed he had been working with Universal Ostrich, extracting COVID-19 antibodies from ostrich eggs to research whether those antibodies can prevent infectious diseases like COVID-19 and H5N1.

Tsukamoto has also studied whether ostrich antibodies could be used to regrow human hair. A company called Ostrigen, which sells a hair-regrowing product called OstriGrow, claims its product is based on Tsukamoto’s research. A mask he invented in 2020 that used ostrich antibodies showed success in detecting COVID-19 infection, according to news reports.

“It’s proven, we’re at usable stages here,” Pasitney said. “We actually have done studies with Immune Biosolutions in 2021 and we were proven effective to neutralize, with our antibodies, the COVID variants. Which was huge.”

Pasitney said Universal Ostrich stopped working with Immune Biosolutions after the Quebec-based company changed hands, a situation she said she found “sinister.” Pasitney said she believes the company “doesn’t want our research out.”

Immune Biosolutions did not respond to a request for comment from The Tyee.

In a 2022 interview with a publication called Dezeen, Tsukamoto said he had been inspired to start researching ostrich antibodies because of their “amazing immunity and resilience.”

But Annelise Botes, a professor of biochemistry at Stellenbosch University in South Africa who studies diseases in ostriches, said it’s misleading to link the ostriches’ capability to fight off disease and the antibodies developed in their eggs.

“Antibodies, although very important in an immune response, are only part of a complex network of immune cells and components in the animal’s (or human) body, involved in reacting to an antigen,” she said.

“It is true that compared to poultry, ostriches are resilient to avian influenza,” she said. But the antibody “does not carry with it the characteristics of the whole animal. You will therefore not have super-immunity to avian influenza and all future variations of the virus if you use ostrich antibodies as a treatment.”

The CFIA did not accept the farm’s request for an exemption, and Universal Ostrich then turned to the Federal Court to ask for a judicial review of the CFIA’s cull order. But on Tuesday, Justice Russel Zinn dismissed the application, saying the CFIA had properly used its authority to contain an avian flu outbreak.

According to the Federal Court decision, Universal Ostrich argued that although 69 birds had died by mid-January, the rest of the flock now likely had “herd immunity” to avian flu.

However, the court ruling noted that H5N1 “can persist outside of hosts in feces, grass, and soil [and] can remain viable for months or even years in fresh water at low temperatures, creating long-lasting sources of infection or re-infection.”

During the two-day Federal Court hearing, Universal Ostrich presented expert reports from Dr. Steven Pelech, Dr. Byram Bridle and Dr. Jeff Wilson. Both Pelech and Bridle became outspoken opponents of COVID-19 vaccines and public health restrictions during the pandemic.

Bridle told the Federal Court that the CFIA hadn’t done enough work to establish whether the H5N1 virus detected in the ostriches was “proof of a highly pathogenic virus.” Pelech said the virus “behaved phenotypically like a low-pathogenic strain.”

The CFIA presented its own veterinarian employee as its expert but also noted that Pelech and Bridle’s “‘herd immunity’ thesis sits well outside mainstream peer-reviewed literature” and “underlines that Drs. Pelech and Bridle have been criticized by courts in other legal proceedings for advocacy masquerading as expertise and have had their reports rejected.”

Justice Zinn wrote that it wasn’t up to the court to arbitrate whether the science was right, but to rule on whether the CFIA’s process was fair and its existing policies are “rational, intelligible and justified.”

The farm’s cause has been taken up by right-wing media figures, including New York billionaire and radio host John Catsimatidis. On a radio segment devoted to the ostrich cull, Catsimatidis interviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. secretary of health and human services. Kennedy’s controversial views include opposing vaccines, believing that fluoridated water has negative health effects and blaming processed foods for cancer and other health problems.

“Mr. Secretary... I want to ask you about ostriches in Canada. These are ancient animals and they have a natural healing process — antibiotics in their eggs,” Catsimatidis told Kennedy during an April 20 broadcast.

“And they’re in danger, because the pharmaceutical companies want to kill them, because they don’t want their solution.”

Kennedy responded that he thought it was “a huge mistake” to cull the ostriches. “These animals live to 50 years old,” he said. “They’re not badly affected by bird flu and we should not be killing them, we should be studying them.”

In his ruling, Zinn pointed out that if the CFIA does not follow its established culling policy in response to avian flu outbreaks, other countries can impose trade restrictions, potentially leading to “severe national economic consequence” for Canadian food producers. The CFIA’s cull and disinfection processes are similar to how our trading partners deal with similar outbreaks, Zinn wrote.

The volunteer researcher who’s been monitoring social media posts about the ostrich farm said he’s seeing signs the ostrich cull is inspiring people to protest, similar to the convoy protest that took over Ottawa in 2022.

“They've been expressing hopes for hundreds or even thousands to rally and physically block the Canadian Food Inspection Agency from culling the herd,” he told The Tyee.

“Increasingly this looks to be turning into a test of strength against what they see as tyrannical overreach by a globalist government.”

Universal Ostrich’s plight has now been taken up by the three Independent MLAs who recently left the B.C. Conservatives after a dispute about one of the MLAs’ comments about residential school survivors.

Jordan Kealy, MLA for Peace River North, has visited the farm and invited Esperson and Pasitney to speak at the B.C. legislature.

In a Facebook post published on May 15, Conservative MP Scott Anderson said he had also visited the farm after the Federal Court ruling and said his “team was working on a plan to save the ostriches.”

Anderson said he’d discussed the issue with Pelech and Wilson: “While I am no scientist in the hard sciences, these folks are, and all of them say that a cull is unnecessary and that the birds and eggs are extremely valuable research subjects.”

In response, a Facebook commenter accused Anderson of being too diplomatic.

“Guarantee the cancellation of the cull, or start culling CFIA employees,” Bradley Winters wrote in response to Anderson’s post.

Story edited on May 20, 2025 at 12:28 p.m. to correct the description of the Universal Ostrich farm’s location.