The highway offered a stark view – a field now silent, where just yesterday hundreds of ostriches roamed. Katie Pasitney stood there, the weight of Thursday night’s cull heavy on her shoulders, her family’s farm in Edgewood, British Columbia, forever altered.
Her mother co-owns Universal Ostrich Farms, and Katie is now channeling her grief into a fight for change. She believes the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s current approach to avian influenza outbreaks – a “stamping-out” policy of mass culling – is fundamentally flawed and failing to contain the spread of the disease.
The farm had become the epicenter of a legal battle, a desperate attempt to halt the cull order issued during last New Year’s Eve’s outbreak. But hope evaporated when the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear their case, paving the way for the devastating action.
As darkness fell on Thursday, the sound of gunfire echoed from within a pen constructed of hay bales by the CFIA. Katie describes the method as inhumane, a brutal end for the flock of approximately 300 to 330 birds.
The CFIA maintains that employing “professional marksmen” was the most humane and practical option. But for the Pasitney family, the justification offers little comfort, only a deepening sense of loss and injustice.
Katie’s voice trembled with emotion as she recalled her father, confined to a wheelchair, weeping with helplessness. He felt unable to shield his family and the creatures they had dedicated their lives to raising.
“I feel like I failed my mum,” she confessed, tears streaming down her face as containers were loaded with the bodies of the slaughtered ostriches. The hay-bale enclosure obscured the full horror, but the emptiness was palpable.
“Our land… it’s a cold, empty shell,” she said, the words laced with pain. But within that despair, a fierce determination ignited. “We’re going to use that as motivation, and we’re going to change Canada.”
The farm, once brimming with life, is now a symbol of a broken system, a place where Katie Pasitney vows to build a future where such devastation is never repeated.
