In memory of the ostriches killed at Universal Ostrich Farms in Edgewood, British Columbia. They were herded under floodlights and shot in the darkness of night, framed as “humane euthanasia.” We refuse that language where it erases life and responsibility.
💧 They were herded under floodlights, rain falling, the ground slick with mud.
💧 The shots rang out in the dark — not once, but again and again — each blast echoing across the valley.
💧 Before death came, fear came first: the noise, the confusion, the bodies pressed together in panic.
💧 They were babies in the truest sense — vulnerable, trusting, alive in their own rhythms — and they were killed without dignity, without transparency, without compassion.
This cruelty did not emerge from nowhere. Canada has long sanctioned violence against animals — from the annual seal hunt to industrial farming — and the ostriches’ last night belongs to that same lineage of sanctioned harm.
💧 When daylight came, more gunshots echoed across the farm. Farmers and supporters reported hearing additional rounds fired in the morning, believed to be aimed at ostriches who had survived the night, wounded and terrified.
💧 Supporters estimate 900+ shots were fired overall — far exceeding the number of birds, suggesting repeated firing and prolonged suffering.
💧 The morning gunfire was a second wave of cruelty, proof that many ostriches endured hours of pain before being killed.
💧 Humane language cannot cover this. It was suffering extended through the night into the day.
💧 Supporters shouted “CFIA you can stop!” and “Run, pretty birds!” as shots rang out.
💧 Their grief and rage are part of this archive.
💧 Farmers insist the birds had developed immunity and were not sick, and that alternatives were rejected without explanation.
Supporters observed and reported that CFIA agents and RCMP officers present at Universal Ostrich Farm did not follow even basic biosecurity protocols:
Images and videos taken the morning after the CFIA-led cull at Universal Ostrich Farms show significantly fewer carcasses than the reported 300+ ostriches allegedly killed the night before. Visual evidence suggests there were at most 200 bodies visible.
Farmers and supporters on-site reported the presence of a grinder and described hearing its operation during the night. This raises urgent questions:
This discrepancy demands forensic accounting and public accountability. The timeline of death, the machinery used, and the number of lives taken must not be obscured by bureaucratic convenience or procedural fog.
For nearly a year, CFIA has offered no explanation. The following questions remain, unanswered and unacknowledged:
Other records that have never been disclosed:
⚠️ Their refusal to answer is itself the evidence of collapse. Silence has become the official record — just as silence has long accompanied Canada’s other sanctioned cruelties, from the seal hunt to the factory floor.
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
Canada’s treatment of animals has long betrayed its claims of compassion — from the annual seal hunt to the sanctioned violence of industrial farming. The killing of the ostriches at Universal Ostrich Farm is not an aberration but another chapter in this history.
This moment reveals Canada’s further moral decline: secrecy, violence, and the refusal of alternatives. The unanswered questions, the silence, and the cruelty toward the ostriches mark not progress but collapse. What was once framed as humane governance is exposed as bureaucratic violence and moral failure.
“If animals are already in human custody, we owe them care—not abandonment. If they’re in danger, we don’t debate their theoretical freedom—we defend their lives.”
— Anonymous
💚 The ostriches weren’t culled because they were dangerous. They were culled because they were inventory.
💚 Because in a system where animals are commodities, their lives are measured in dollars, not breath.
💚 If we didn’t eat meat—if animals weren’t bred, sold, and slaughtered for consumption—there would be no need for culls, no need for bureaucracies like CFIA to regulate the killing.
💚 No need for inspections that treat living beings as carcasses-in-waiting.
💚 No need for “humane” protocols that sanitize violence with paperwork.
💚 The cull wasn’t inevitable. It was systemic.
💚 And the system exists because we normalize meat.