About a dozen Quesnel residents are protesting the Canadian Food Inspection Agency(CFIA)’s and the Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling to cull around 300 ostriches at the Universal Ostrich Farm in Edgewood, B.C.
“I totally object to my tax dollars being used to neglect, abuse, and kill healthy animals when we have a healthcare crisis,” said one protester, Linda Arnold. “They totally abused, neglected, and killed healthy ostriches. But this is a much bigger issue than that. This is an issue throughout Canada.”
Arnold, a former director of nursing in the healthcare profession, said Canadian taxpayer dollars could have been better used by the government to hire and train more doctors and nurses. She also felt that with modern technology, the CFIA could have better tested the ostriches.
“Instead of testing, they[the CFIA] are killing on assumption, animals that are not sick. We’ve got a healthcare crisis. The cost of food is going up, and yet they are killing healthy animals instead of testing them.”
The small group of protesters gathered at the railway station on Legion Drive with signs and waved at all vehicles that honked.
Other protestors agreed with Arnold’s objections that taxpayer money should have gone to lowering food costs and helping reduce the impacts of the healthcare crisis. Others also believed the culling of the ostriches was a lost opportunity for scientific advancements.
“It’s such a lost opportunity,” said Cindy Osip, a former nurse. “Those birds were healthy for over 250, almost 300 days. They’re a prehistoric bird, which means they’ve survived. They have antibodies that humans don’t have. In my belief system, these birds and their antibodies will, no doubt in my mind, hold the key to curing many human diseases. This was handled was wrong. We get no proper answers. We took an opportunity at a good piece of science, and it has now gone down the tubes.”
Another protester, George Edwards, was also protesting to bring awareness around and to stop the Kill Act.
“It has got to stop, and it’s got to be changed so that they do the same with all animals as they do with human beings,” Edwards said. “If the ostriches were human beings, would the government spend a million dollars and refuse to test then shoot us all? They’d do it correctly, and take tests of the dead, the live, the feed, the water, and air, and send them to laboratories, and look for a cure. This should have been done.”
The protesters felt that more peaceful protests should be held across the province and Canada. They hope that the message of what they believe is a lost opportunity for science and a misuse of taxpayer dollars can be spread and make changes for the future.
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