“You’re easy to follow. Katie. You’ve become our Joan of Arc,” said Gerry Ritz
On Jan. 15 the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) upheld a $10,000 fine against Universal Ostrich Farms (UOF) for supposedly not informing either a veterinarian or the CFIA when Katie Pasitney and her mother, Karen Espersen, discovered sickness among their ostriches.
Within hours of the ruling, Katie had released dozens of documents on her Facebook page, including call logs that proved the farm had been in contact immediately with local veterinarians, who were somewhat tardy in their response because it was during the Christmas season. The CFIA also alleged that it only learned of the sickness due to an “anonymous call.” The call came after the farm informed the federal government bureaucracy of potential disease at the farm. Katie also proved that to be a falsehood – or let’s call it what it is, a lie. In its relationship with UOF, the CFIA has been deeply rooted in mendacity.
Interestingly that disease was never conclusively proven to be H5N1 avian influenza. The CFIA only conducted two PCR tests on DEAD ostriches and we now know that the tests are wildly inaccurate.
So I brought together a panel of experts to discuss this latest flagrant injustice against the farm, this latest blow to punish the farm for refusing to accept either the narrative nor the abominable behavior of the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney as demonstrated through Agriculture Canada’s CFIA.
The phenomenal former Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz was there, along with the multi-skilled veterinarian Dr. Jeff Wilson and, of course, the incredible Katie Pasitney, a woman whom Ritz now refers to as “our Joan of Arc.”
Amen.
We started the conversation with Katie’s response to the $10K fine and the CFIA’s erroneous claims to justify that punitive measure.
“So when [the Federal Court of Appeal] is coming out with the ruling against the Emergencies Act that it was found, once again … unlawful … And right at the same time, they’re almost showing the world, ‘no look over here, over here. You know, we’re fining the ostrich farm $10,000 and everybody watch over here.’ We’re over here. We’re being found guilty. So I find that the timing was also kind of a coincidence.”
“They knew we called. It’s acknowledged in the call log. We didn’t call one vet; we called two vets,” Pasitney said, noting that “the symptoms were identical to pseudonymous bacteria illness. So we had this back in 2020 we did the appropriate calls once again, we did testing, which was gold standard sampling with a vet, the test came back positive for pseudonymous bacteria. We did our quarantine measures on our own, because pseudonymous bacteria is not reportable under Canadian Food Inspection Agency.”
“And back in 2020 we lost about 10 ostriches. Did everything appropriately back then, disposing of the animals and cleaning up. Obviously, every farmer follows their own protocol, because they don’t want their other animals to get sick and you want to stop illness as fast as you can. So we were doing all of our due diligence,” Pasitney continued.
“So when we go to 2024 we start seeing the symptoms are identical to 2020 nothing is red flagging us … Avian influenza has never been a problem on our farm or a thought, And so we did call the vets. It’s on the call log. We fought this,” she said, adding that she found the timing of the decision to be somewhat curious.
“But one thing I do find really ironic is that here they know that this is a global story. This is a ‘world is watching story.’ So when [the Federal Court of Appeal] is coming out with the ruling against the Emergencies Act that it was found, once again … unlawful … And right at the same time, they’re almost showing the world, ‘no look over here, over here. You know, we’re fining the ostrich farm $10,000 and everybody watch over here.’ We’re over here. We’re being found guilty. So I find that the timing was also kind of a coincidence.”
“This is a power play. This is adding insult to injury, you know. And you follow the saga of what all happened on that particular farm, CFIA went totally rogue. The biggest person escaping from all of this is the minister [Heath MacDonald].”
Former Conservative MP Gerry Ritz was an ostrich farmer who represented his norther Saskatchewan riding for 20 years. He was also Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s minister of agriculture and agri-food for eight years from 2007-2015. Ritz has been both eloquent and outspoken in his support for UOF and his condemnation of the CFIA’s brutal, shocking and incompetent handling of its invasion and occupation of the ostrich farm.
Speaking to the fine, Ritz said, “This is a power play. This is adding insult to injury, you know. And you follow the saga of what all happened on that particular farm, CFIA went totally rogue. The biggest person escaping from all of this is the minister [Heath MacDonald]. He had the power at any time to shut this down or ask for briefings, and maybe he did, but he just ignored them to say that you guys are completely off of your mandate. You’re completely outside of the realm of anything that’s practical or that you could back up in any court. So they come out now with this final slap across the face here, and I think it’s just ridiculous that they’re doing this, Ritz said.
“There’s no way they’re going to win this. I think Katie’s absolutely right. It’s a ‘look over here moment.’ We’ve seen a number of those as [Prime Minister Mark] Carney flies around the world and tells everybody what a great job he’s doing here, but he’s not. And this is fairly symptomatic of everything else that’s happening to Canadians.”
Pasitney pointed out that the CFIA ignored all of the advice and regulations of the globalist organizations that it pretends to respect. “They’re not using the guidelines. And again, you know all oversight we’re seeing is only happening and occurring after their irreversible harm and damage is being done to our agricultural industry. So we’re becoming very reactive. And I think Jeff, you would agree with this, and probably Gerry as well. We have to start becoming proactive, and we’re seeing that with the courts as well. They’ve been put in a really reactive kind of state, whereas we need to be more proactive. And one of those things is we have to address is our Charter of Rights and the violation of our Charter of Rights, and what does that mean for Canadians going forward and in the future,” she said.
Ritz agreed. “The CFIA claims to be a science-based organization and the mandates, when I was there, that’s exactly what it was all about. But every once in a while, personalities get in the way, and we had to, at times, take an inspector off of a project simply because they’d gotten too involved or were going sideways on it. But that comes down to the minister of the day still has oversight and control of the CFIA.”
“And I saw them agitate the animals more and more every day as we went on. And that does not speak to the science basis that CFIA is to operate under.”
“We have to start becoming proactive, and we’re seeing that with the courts as well. They’ve been put in a really reactive kind of state, whereas we need to be more proactive. And one of those things is we have to address is our Charter of Rights and the violation of our Charter of Rights, and what does that mean for Canadians going forward and in the future,” Pasitney said.
Pastiney remembered just how fierce that agitation was. “They absolutely abused the animals … The RCMP stood there and watched animal cruelty happen and animal neglect happen and that’s all we asked. We said you were standing right here, and you’re witnessing it. Please help our animals. And then, I mean, all of the supporters were watching this. People around the world were watching this, and … they were we were spending millions of dollars as a country,” she said as she recalled how the numbers of ostriches kept dropping every week as the “CFIA was working in the middle of the night. We were witnessing them work between 2:30 and 4:30 in the morning at the back of our pens.”
She said the massacre itself was “the biggest crime, and that there was no secure perimeter, 1000s of gun or almost 1000 gunshots. They brought in arms, armed marksmen and then they waged war on our small farm in the middle of nowhere and they brought weapons to our farm to kill these animals in the most inhumane, cruel way.”
Ritz is aghast that there have been no legal or disciplinary ramifications for those involved in this disaster. “The very agencies that should be the ones blowing the whistle are complicit. So, I mean, it’s a parade of insanity from the farm down into the lower mainland, where these birds were finally interred. Generally, that’s done right on-site … So for them to load it up and have this parade all the way all those hundreds of miles down through Surrey, and then we saw sites of those trucks sitting in a yard for days with the odor and liquid oozing out and so on, before they actually were interred in that landfill, just baffles me. It just boggles my mind how they got away with that, how city bylaws and so on were overrun and yet again, like you said, no one’s blowing the whistle. It’s just unconscionable.”
“And I saw them agitate the animals more and more every day as we went on. And that does not speak to the science basis that CFIA is to operate under,” said Ritz.
Dr. Jeff Wilson, a veterinarian and professor at the University of Guelph is actively working to either reform the CFIA or watch it implode into its own chaos and rogue behavior. “All of this can be explained by the fact that CFIA and others simply weren’t following extremely well established outbreak response processes. It’s very well known how to manage these outbreaks. So it’s actually understanding all the things like the biosecurity things and the shooting [done so] inappropriately, and everything else. It’s all classic failures of proper outbreak response. It’s just on a scale which is so outrageous because it’s really obvious,” Wilson said. “It’s helpful for people to understand that it’s not just a random set of things that are going on. It’s a failure of proper leadership, which can be very easily defined, proper data collection, doing interventions based on evidence, not on politics or whatever, and then communicating appropriately so, so we know the direction this has to go,” he said.
Did the Federal Court of Appeal decision embolden Katie and her mom to continue their fight with the CFIA and demand accountability, justice and perhaps even compensation?
“The sad reality too is this situation did not happen in a political vacuum; there would be extra funding required for CFA to carry out this debacle. That would have to go before the cabinet.”
“Absolutely,” Katie said without hesitation. Miracle Friday was so great last week. I did a video, because it was just so exciting to see a step, one little step in the right direction when we need to uphold our Charter of Rights. And absolutely we’re going through [our options] … Well, there’s Section 12: I mean hours of gunfire. Our animals were dying in panic and the abuse of search and seizure too,” she said.
“They overtook not just our property, but they were taking over our, my aunt and uncle’s neighboring property. All of a sudden, they just expanded these zones and took over and and took over our properties and kicked us off our land. [The appeal courts decision] was so exciting because it is hoped that they set one of the biggest precedents … because that precedent can be used in our case, and we’re going to go full force with it. “We’re going to make sure that this never happens to anyone again.”
“Where is our true leadership that’s standing up to make sure that these unelected officials are actually being held accountable for their actions?” Pasitney asked. “We’re going to step into that with the Emergencies Act. There’s so many similarities between the failures of the misuse of the Emergencies Act and the emergency declared at our farm … there were just way too many similarities,” she continued.
“I always say that our angels are working overtime right now for us, but only because we are not going to give up and we’re dedicated to charging forward, to making sure that our agricultural independence and our farmers and our food security and our sovereignty is protected. The ostriches … didn’t just go through this most awful and horrendous death for nothing.”
“But that’s when we should fight the hardest, is when it’s the things that we can’t touch and can’t see, like [the censorship] Bill C-9 and all the bills that are being passed. While we’re all fighting each other and divided we’re allowing the government to strip away our rights behind our backs. So it’s the things that we can’t see and the things that we can’t touch that we should fight harder for,” said Pasitney.
As a former minister, Ritz is most apt to bring the ostrich farm catastrophe back to the politicians who ultimately were and are responsible for it.
“The sad reality too is this situation did not happen in a political vacuum; there would be extra funding required for CFA to carry out this debacle. That would have to go before the cabinet. There would have to be an ask by the minister to his cabinet colleagues to expand the amount of dollars available for this type of a situation,” he declared.
“So at some point that’s going to come before a parliamentary committee showing the over exuberance of both the CFIA and RCMP in this particular instance; it will get an idea of the cost, and that’s generally what starts to galvanize people around a situation. They looked at the horrendous response that was leveled against the family here and the ostriches, and when they start to realize the amount of money that was blown out the door for it in the end, the result that we saw, they will start to get excited again.”
During the conversation Katie revealed that the CFIA had to use further prevarication to get the hay bales required to build their kill pen. “They were having such a hard time finding straw bales that they actually put a purchase order of straw bales under my name. They phoned around saying, ‘Katie Pasitney has asked us to purchase bedding.’ And when the trucking company came and they had the bales at the farm, they knew something was very wrong.”
Will the farm see a dollar from the federal government for its massive loss? “So compensation, I don’t know,” Katie said. “All I know is that we’re going to fight for for what’s right, to change these policies, to change the laws, to have proper outbreak response control … and whatever comes out of that, we do want to hold them accountable, that’s for sure, because we have to show that no organization should be able to get away with what they’ve done.”
At this point, Ritz applauded Katie’s phenomenal efforts on behalf of not just her family and her farm but for families and farmers all across Canada.
“You’re easy to follow. Katie. You’ve become our Joan of Arc.”
Our Joan of Arc has proclaimed 2026 to be “the Year of Accountability and Transparency. Yeah. And I firmly believe it. I just think we already see the wheels are just starting to turn back a little bit. And we keep up that pressure, I think we’re going to, we’re going to be able to go in the right direction.”
“They’re going to see that our family is going to continue to fight,” Katie continued.
“So when the ostriches were here, you know, you see them, it’s easier to fight for something you can see. That you can touch. They’re right there. But when they were gone … I couldn’t see them anymore. I couldn’t touch them; it became harder to figure out, to realize what I was fighting for. And I think [that’s true for] a lot of Canadians, because if you can’t touch it and see it and it’s not affecting you directly today, then you don’t want to get up and fight for it. But that’s when we should fight the hardest, is when it’s the things that we can’t touch and can’t see, like [the censorship] Bill C-9 and all the bills that are being passed. While we’re all fighting each other and divided we’re allowing the government to strip away our rights behind our backs. So it’s the things that we can’t see and the things that we can’t touch that we should fight harder for.”
Experts Demolish Carney’s Scheme to DESTROY Food Affordability and Canadian Farmers | Stand on Guard
www.kraydensrightnews.com! We appreciate all of your support for this Substack and on our independent multi-media on other social media platforms. This is independent journalism you can trust bringing you the news you need to know!
NEW Stand on Guard Merch with a Message Now available in our Stand on Guard Store. These products are available & ready to ship to Canada and the United States.
Triger Stickers (5 per page)
Hoodies
Tees
Caps
Coffee Mugs
Let us know what you think? We are new to this so thank you for your patience!
Join David Krayden for the Stand on Guard Podcast.
David Krayden does daily livestream broadcasts at 10:00 AM ET to bring you the latest news from Ottawa and around the world. Everything you won’t hear on the mainstream media.
JOIN THE KRAYDEN’S RIGHT RESISTANCE
Freedom of the Press is NOT cheap. If you believe in independent media and the stories I am covering, you can support me in the following voluntary paid subscriber and membership options, starting at around $5 on the following socials:
...the destruction, humiliation and criminalization of the best hard working people by a corrupt and/or incompetent govmt and its shills. All they do is to destroy small businesses, farms, to over tax and over -reach, to impose idiotic regulations that strangle the economy and businesses, to impose absurd rules that make no sense and keep the country as undeveloped as possible. In any type o businesses and fields, not just agriculture.
CFIA IS A GLOBAL CATASTROPHY!
Just another day in Canada!
...the destruction, humiliation and criminalization of the best hard working people by a corrupt and/or incompetent govmt and its shills. All they do is to destroy small businesses, farms, to over tax and over -reach, to impose idiotic regulations that strangle the economy and businesses, to impose absurd rules that make no sense and keep the country as undeveloped as possible. In any type o businesses and fields, not just agriculture.