An ostrich farm in the B.C. Interior has got further support from right-wing American influencers when another online commentator added his voice, saying he would like to “help the ostriches out there in Canada” and relocate them to Texas.
The Universal Ostrich Farm in Edgewood, B.C., has been calling on supporters to gather at the property to save about 400 ostriches at the farm after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency ordered the cull of the birds following an outbreak of avian flu last December.
Conservative commentator Chris Sanders says in a Facebook video that he is offering a couple of his ranches, and he’d like to help move the ostriches to Oklahoma, Texas, and South Dakota.
Sanders says he is calling on truck drivers to help him save these ostriches.
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Katie Pasitney, a spokeswoman with the farm, says she is aware of Sanders’ comments, and she is exploring that option now.
Pasitney also says in a Facebook post on Sunday that she thinks the CFIA will carry out the cull today, and she is asking people to flood calls with authorities to tell them to “stand on the right side of history.”
CFIA has refused to release details or timing of any operation.
It wasn’t the first time the farm was thrust into the global spotlight, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a letter to the president of the CFIA in May, asking the farm to be spared from a planned cull.
Kennedy, the U.S. secretary for health and human services, says in the letter to Paul MacKinnon that there would be “significant value” in studying the ostriches’ immune response to avian flu.
The farm lost bids to stop the cull in Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal, and last week was denied another stay of the cull order while it prepares to apply for leave to go to the Supreme Court of Canada, an application that must be made by Oct. 3.