Union president raises safety concerns for its CFIA members tasked with B.C. ostrich cull

Akshay Kulkarni · CBC News

· Posted: May 26, 2025 11:03 PM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours ago

The national representing Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) workers tasked with carrying retired a cull astatine a B.C. ostrich workplace says determination are fears implicit the workers' information arsenic emotions tally high.

Over 400 birds astatine Universal Ostrich workplace successful Edgewood, B.C., look the imaginable of a cull owed to an avian flu detection successful December.

The CFIA, which is handling Canada's effect to an ongoing avian flu outbreak, won a tribunal lawsuit earlier this period and says the cull volition spell up owed to concerns implicit the dispersed and mutation of the virus.

But a vocal contingent of supporters — including U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — has spoken retired against the cull, arguing the flightless birds, galore decades old, pose small menace of spreading avian flu and the herd should beryllium preserved for technological study.

WATCH | Supporters protestation CFIA cull order: 

Supporters person camped retired astatine the Edgewood workplace for weeks, saying they won't let the cull to spell ahead, adjacent as farm spokesperson Katie Pasitney has repeatedly urged supporters to beryllium peaceful, respectful and to travel the law.

Now, the national representing CFIA workers says it's fearful for their safety, implicit online decease threats it says were made against CFIA members.

"Nobody likes to spot their flocks culled, and we surely don't instrumentality immoderate pleasance successful doing it, but ... it is our jobs, it's our mandate for the information of Canadians to guarantee that we transportation retired our job," said Milton Dyck, the president of the Agriculture Union, successful an interrogation with CBC News.

Dyck said that a CFIA conveyance successful the country of the workplace was besides pelted with a rock, but helium does not cognize if that was straight related to the planned ostrich cull.

He said that the mean idiosyncratic was not liable for the cull decision, which the CFIA says is owed to wider concerns implicit microorganism mutation and the interaction it could person connected Canada's nutrient supply.

"Some radical volition beryllium passionate astir what their motives are for keeping the ostriches — whether they emotion ostriches, whether it's thing that they consciousness personally astir disease," helium said.

"But we person to look astatine it arsenic we are doing a work to Canadians due to the fact that we're protecting the wellness and information of Canadians. We're protecting the worth of the nutrient concatenation going forward."

WATCH | Protesters rally against planned cull: 

In a statement, the national said it supported each individual's close to peaceful protest, truthful agelong arsenic it does not obstruct the enactment of its members.

While the CFIA has said the cull would beryllium proceeding, it has not provided an nonstop day erstwhile it would occur.