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Would you believe that Universal Ostrich Farms is still under quarantine eight months after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) left it looking like a warzone?
It’s true. And there is still no end in sight.
The lives of Katie Pasitney and Karen Espersen were changed forever during the night that stretched from Nov. 6 to 7. After weeks of their farm being first invaded and occupied by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the mother and daughter had learned that the Supreme Court would not hear their case to save their beloved ostriches from a completely unnecessary “cull” – as the killers in their Hazmat suits called it, insisting the birds were in the throes of avian influenza. The CFIA moved in as darkness fell over Universal Ostrich Farms in Edgewood, BC. The so-called “marksmen” shot at the birds all night long and into the early morning hours of the next day, killing hundreds, maybe 300 – it was never determined how many birds were actually killed on site and how many had already been spirited away, dead or alive, during multiple periods of weird activity in the wee small hours of the morning.
On that grisly, terrible morning, some of the ostriches were still alive, writhing in pain and clinging to life. The killers finished them off with a bullet to their heads.
And that should tell you a lot about just how sick and awful this experience was.
“I am back. I’m ready to speak more about this. There’re great opportunities coming,” Katie says.
It was the most traumatic experience of Katie’s and Karen’s lives – and probably also for the dozens of supporters who had gathered on the site and decided to remain to show their undying loyalty to the farm and these courageous women. The CFIA’s massacre was so reckless that it endangered the lives of those who chose to stay. The shooters expended their rifle shells in every direction in what was termed a “kill pen.” But just as the CFIA goons had been careless and cruel throughout their occupation of the farm, they weren’t exactly prudent in their firing. But, by the time the sun rose in the morning, there were lifeless birds lying all around the pen where they had once frolicked and danced and delighted not just the owners but thousands of visitors to the farm.
Katie was left not just distraught but emotionally decapitated. She could barely function as fall became winter and Christmas arrived. The family was not and still is not allowed to clean up the disaster that the CFIA left behind them, spent shell casings all over the yard, blood-soaked hay, garbage left behind. I did some interviews with Katie and encouraged her and her mom to sue the CFIA and the Liberal government. But the day came when Katie just didn’t want to talk anymore. She had endured the merciless online assaults of hate groups and morons who were convinced Katie and her mom had somehow pulled off an elaborate con; that they had really wanted things to end up like this, even if that end was financially and emotionally catastrophic. They decided to participate in a CBC fifth estate documentary called “The Ostrich Con” that was one of the most vicious and atrocious pieces of journalistic excesses in Canadian history. It is insufficiently accurate to say the “documentary” was a hit job. It was an exercise in myopic, tendentious, politically-motivated reporting that never asked any of the real questions that had always been pertinent to the ostrich farm calamity.
“Why aren’t we testing the soil? Why are we not testing the straw out in the field? Why haven’t they been back on site to test the water to see what is happening with the evolving virus?”
Such as why the CFIA had never tested the birds for the H5N1 avian influenza that had provoked the cull order in the beginning. The birds had obviously developed herd immunity and were healthy
Instead, the CBC came for the family, just as the CFIA had come for the ostriches. It was a monstrous example of character assassination.
Well, this week, Katie came back. I spoke with her for the first time in months and we were joined by an old friend, former Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Gerry Ritz, who has been outstandingly supportive of Katie and her mom while being both a knowledgeable and severe critic of the CFIA’s “thuggery” as he consistently called the bad behavior of this off-the-rails government agency. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that Ritz doesn’t have to get involved in politics anymore; that’s he’s fought the good fight and served Canada. But Gerry can’t help himself because he’s a good man who cares about people and especially about farmers.
Here’s the result of our recent conversation.
It’s so nice to have Katie back.
But believe it or not, the farm is still in quarantine and will be so for an indefinite time. Maybe forever. But probably not if we can continue to fight this para-military squad with the same intensity and dedication that Katie and Karen have exhibited.
I asked Katie why the CFIA was continuing to stop the cleanup at the farm and threatening to charge anyone who dared ignore their edict. Anyone who does eventually volunteer to assist in carting away the CFIA’s mess will have to register.
The official reason for keeping the farm under quarantine is because these are “fallow days,” meaning the temperature is above four degrees Celsius.
Of course, it’s all just more rubbish from a government agency that dispenses mendacity and trash – both real and verbal – at an alarming rate.
“They have not been on our farm since they left. There has been no more testing. I guess it could bring us all back to the scientific question, when we were begging for the ostriches to be tested to use science over speculation, especially if we’re handling such a severe virus and something that could be a potential risk to humanity. Why aren’t we testing the soil? Why are we not testing the straw out in the field? Why haven’t they been back on site to test the water to see what is happening with the evolving virus? Is it already destroyed by weather? Is there any more virus left? Why are we going off speculatory old data of 180 fallow days?” Katie asks.
“We have to understand, as Canadians, that this - when your animals are destroyed and the damage is done – doesn’t just end in our fields and it doesn’t end in our barns, and it doesn’t end in our pastures. It follows into our homes … it follows into our children who’ve watched your family break and lose everything, and then it just doesn’t stop with their children. It follows into my children. It’s a generational pain.”
She isn’t expecting any answers even they’ve “found live ammunition in this straw. We don’t know how much live ammunition is under it, and there’s so much potential hazard and risk sitting out there yet. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency just walked away from it.”
Pasitney says the farm’s supporters are not keen on surrendering their personal information to the CFIA, especially since some are farmers and therefore subject to the vicious whims of this out of control government agency.
“A lot of people said, ‘No way.’ I mean, here we have just a bunch of Good Samaritans that want to see this trauma put behind us, so that we continue to move forward, and we can create, hopefully, some hope and change, and come up with better policies that are going to affect Canadians in a more positive way and they’re being – it’s almost a threat, right? It’s just like the facial recognition or retinal scanning, or it’s all … invasive,” Katie continues.
“We have to understand, as Canadians, that this — when your animals are destroyed and the damage is done — doesn’t just end in our fields and it doesn’t end in our barns, and it doesn’t end in our pastures. It follows into our homes … it follows into our children who’ve watched your family break and lose everything and then it just doesn’t stop with their children. It follows into my children. It’s a generational pain. It’s a generational trauma that is created every time we do this and the generations that are watching this are learning not to trust our government; they’re learning not to trust our RCMP,” she observes.
“We need to come together as Canadians, united, and we have to find a better way. How do we protect our country? How do we protect our agricultural sector? How do we stop this from being a generational curse?”
Katie reveals that despite the land supposedly still being unfit for farming, the CFIA just walked away and didn’t start paying attention again until Katie and her mom talked about cleaning up the warzone. Mark Kelly, primary journalist for the CBC’s “fifth estate” and that program’s hatchet job on the farm — that really has to be seen to be believed because it is so toxic and mean — came to the farm and just walked around the supposedly contaminated kill pen like he was inspecting a local park. That reminded me of how the CFIA officers did not bother to wear Hazmat suits for days after their occupation of the farm. How strange. But if you’re in on the big lie then you don’t even have to bother to look like you’re taking any of this very seriously.
“It wasn’t until they saw that we were going to start to clean it up and expose that there’s live ammunition and expose the pain once again, [that] it was going to come to light that they piped up and said, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you can’t touch it. There’re fallow days that have to be followed above four degrees Celsius.”
Gerry Ritz finds it all ridiculous but pretty much typical for today’s CFIA, an organization he used to command as the minister responsible.
“The old adage, ‘[adding] insult to injury,’ pops to mind, but doesn’t begin to cover the egregious behavior of these CFIA thugs,” he says. “You know, the whole mandate of CFIA is one based on science. It is to support food safety and trade corridors, so that our products can still go … domestically and internationally. They’ve gone way beyond that with what they’ve done here. I can’t, for the life of me, understand the powers that would be allowing this to happen. We’ve got a rogue element within CFIA. There’s still some really good people there.”
Ritz used to work with the current president of the CFIA, Dr. Harpreet Kochhar, and he promises to Katie to contact him and ask him what he thinks of what has happened and what is still happening at Universal Ostrich Farms.
“I mean, I found him to be a very thoughtful, science-based gentleman and I’m more than happy to contact him on your behalf and see just where his thoughts are on this. He really would respond to me. He should, being a former minister, and as a former friend, I would like to think he would. I do have his contacts, but I wanted to check with you first, Katie, before I went that route at the end of the day,” Ritz offers.
“CFIA is all about containment. They’ve done more than that here. And what I can’t understand is these fallow days don’t mean squat, as far as I’m concerned. I mean, there’s migratory birds, there’s animals coming through that all the time. That’s not containment. What you guys wanted to do was clean up that and actually extend that containment, so that the soil was cleansed, and they’re not allowing you to do that. That, to me, is the lack of science. It’s the antithesis of science. This is a cover-up. It continues to be just that,” Gerry insists, remembering how the CFIA claimed to “deep bury” all of the ostriches but really brought a truckload to Surrey and “rotted on the spot,” which, Ritz says continues “to destroy the credibility of the CFIA.”
“You know, the whole mandate of CFIA is one based on science. It is to support food safety and trade corridors, so that our products can still go … domestically and internationally. They’ve gone way beyond that with what they’ve done here. I can’t, for the life of me, understand the powers that would be allowing this to happen. We’ve got a rogue element within CFIA. There’s still some really good people there,” Ritz says.
Katie and Karen held up the CFIA’s lack of credibility for the world to see by meticulously documenting the cruelty and medical incompetence demonstrated by the agents who used to enjoy lassoing the ostriches and tormenting them.
“Everyone in Canada should wake up and look at what happened at our farm, and if that can happen at our farm, I think the question needs to be, ‘Are you next?’ Who’s next? And how is this going to affect the future of Canadians and our families? I am still shocked. Yeah, we are still fighting,” Katie says.
And, at long last, “There is going to be a lawsuit. This, it’s very important. It’s taken a lot of time, because … we’ve been in a healing bubble … but every day is just so consumed with this, this feeling of that nobody got [charged], says Katie. She says she continues to get messages from supporters and well-wishers who ask, “You’re still fighting, right?”
“I think we just need to come up with a solution. I really want to see us all come forward with a solution that’s going to be a better way, that’s going to have an agency that’s going to have more to answer to, to have accountability. There’s the accountability word; but we need an agency that has to answer to the people that they’re supposed to be serving and this has been a very long, wild ride,” Katie reveals.
Gerry is convinced that the CFIA could well come up with another excuse to keep the farm under quarantine once they run out of fallow days. “But if they’re even concerned about containment of this virulent virus, they would have cleaned it up themselves. In fact, that’s part of their original mandate. If they take over a farm, they do the cleanup, and I haven’t seen that happen here. They didn’t take care of the ostriches … everything was beyond the pale, and you know, nobody forgets, and nor should we.”
We get to the fifth estate piece. Katie says the title itself – “The Ostrich Con” provided every indication that this “documentary” was going to be a cruel, ad hominem, character assassination.
“The only con that was happening here was the Canadian Food Inspection Agency blindly trying to blindfold the public, saying ‘This is a virus, this is a virus.’ So we were not the con. The con, [in] the title was, I think, it was one of the worst things. Just felt like a punch to the gut.”
Katie says what made it even worse is that there are still a lot of Canadians who really believe the CBC produces reputable journalism and is not just state media for their favorite Liberal governments that continue to dispense $1.5 billion a year to keep the operation going.
“When they came, they were coming to actually just interview the hate group in Edgewood that had been created, they were never going to interview us, and then at the very last minute he said, ‘With or without you, this is going out,’ because my mom and I were not going to put our face up to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.”
“We weren’t going to put our faces to it, we said absolutely not, but then we just said ‘No, we have nothing to hide, we have everything to show, and we’re going to answer the hard questions and we’re going to come on, and we’re going to — yeah — we’ll answer our questions.”
“The only con that was happening here was the Canadian Food Inspection Agency blindly trying to blindfold the public, saying ‘This is a virus, this is a virus.’ So we were not the con. The con, [in] the title was, I think it was one of the worst things. Just felt like a punch to the gut.”
“So, to see how it ended up turning out was really, really sad,” says Katie, remarking that Mark Kelly had the unmitigated nerve to ask her if she was embarrassed for reaching out to sympathetic Americans like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “And I said, ‘Well, if our country would have listened, and we would have had any true leadership that would have taken the time to understand what we were trying to fight for, I wouldn’t have had to go out of country,’ and the only reason I went out of country was because I was involving one of our largest trading partners, who they kept saying it had to do a trade.”
I reminded Katie how we used to talk in the aftermath of the tragedy and plan for the creation of a group that would fight for farmers. Katie would be “a voice for farmers. I remembered how the last time Katie, Gerry and I were on my broadcast together, Gerry had called Katie “our Joan of Arc.”
“And I said that’s that was so beautiful, and I said it was just so touching, and I think it’s just so appropriate, and I know you’ve been through - I won’t say literal hell, but the next worst thing to it in the last six months and it’s been a terrible time for you and I know there have been times you just haven’t been able to talk, and you haven’t been able to do interviews, and I totally understand that.”
“They’ve tried their damnedest to push you down, but they will never ever push you out,” maintains Gerry Ritz.
I asked Katie if she thought there might be “a time when you can enter the ring again, be our Joan of Arc, fight for farmers, be that voice that you have been such an articulate voice for all during this time … Whenever you do an interview, you always get the point across in a way that few others that I know, certainly in the agricultural sector, do as well as you do. So, I hope and I pray you’re able to get involved,” I said.
Katie accepted the compliment, or more accurately, acknowledged the truth.
“I never asked for this position when I decided to stand by my mom’s side last year. It was about protecting our family, and it very quickly evolved into something more. And I’m proud to say to kids and people who’ve reached out to me and said, you and your mom are heroes for saying no and just taking the fight on at the afterwards, it was like hitting a brick wall … because for over 300 days we were just on a mission, taking every phone call, every interview, to make sure that we could get … the message across to all Canadians and people across the world, that we could unite people, and that the ostriches were not going to die in vain,” says Katie.
“I am back. I’m ready to speak more about this. There’re great opportunities coming,” she says.
“They’ve tried their damnedest to push you down, but they will never ever push you out,” Gerry interjects.
“Nope, they will not. Thanks, Jerry, and my mom too. If you have never met such a warrior, and that’s where I got it from, my mom; she is a force to be reckoned with. She is still at home. She’s caring for my dad on top of all of this, and so we’ve just — we’ve both just been kind of bouncing off each other, but we’re both ready to get back in the ring.”
And as resistance leader Victor Lazlo says to a resurgent Rick Blaine in the immortal film Casablanca, “Welcome back to the fight.”
WATCH: Ostrich Farm Still Under Attack From Carney | Stand on Guard Exclusive Interview with Gerry Ritz and Katie Pasitney
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