URGENT ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING THE CANADIAN OSTRICHES

The decision has been handed down in the case of Universal Ostrich Farms Inc. v Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Your prayers are needed to stop the murder of 400 HEALTHY ostriches.

James Roguski

May 14, 2025

189

141

The application put forward by Universal Ostrich Farms Inc. to stop the order to cull their nearly 400 HEALTHY ostriches has been rejected.

Official Announcement:
Federal Court Decision in Universal Ostrich Farms Inc. v. Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Dear friends and supporters,
We are absolutely devastated to share today’s Federal Court decision, issued on May 13, 2025. The court ruled in favour of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), upholding their order to destroy our beloved ostriches and rejecting our plea to save them.
The court’s decision accepted the CFIA’s justification under the Health of Animals Act and their use of the Stamping-Out Policy, which mandates the destruction of animals to control disease outbreaks, regardless of their health status.
The court confirmed the CFIA’s approach, prioritizing trade obligations over the welfare of our animals.
In addition, we’ve been ordered to pay $15,000 in CFIA’s legal costs.
We are heartbroken by this outcome and uncertain about the future of our farm. As we navigate this incredibly difficult time, we ask for your patience and continued support. If you are able, please consider making a donation to help us manage the financial and emotional toll this has taken.
Thank you,
Universal Ostrich Farm

https://SaveOurOstriches.com/ABOUT/

https://SaveOurOstriches.com/cause/donate/

Download and read the entire decision:

Universal Ostrich Farms Inc V Canadian Food Inspection Agency Judgment And Reasons

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EXCERPTS:

I. Overview

[1] The Applicant, Universal Ostrich Farms Inc., challenges two related decisions made by the Respondent, Canadian Food Inspection Agency [the CFIA or the Agency], under section 48 of the Health of Animals Act, SC 1990, c 21 [the Act]. The first decision, a Notice to Dispose issued on December 31, 2024, ordered the destruction of all ostriches on the farm after laboratory tests confirmed infection with H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza [HPAI]. The second, an Exemption Denial, dated January 10, 2025, refused the farm’s request to spare the flock on the basis that the ostriches formed a self-contained, unexposed “distinct epidemiological unit” with “rare and valuable poultry genetics,” thus qualifying for an exemption from the Notice to Dispose under the CFIA’s Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza 2022 Event Response Plan [the 2022 ERP].

[2] At the heart of this proceeding lies an inevitable tension between the CFIA’s mandate to protect public health and the Applicant’s wish to preserve its ostriches. Parliament has charged the CFIA with preventing the spread of designated zoonotic and enzootic diseases and with protecting the food supply, public health, and Canada’s reputation in global trade. To do so, the Agency complies with the internationally recognized and applied “Stamping-Out Policy” approach recommended by the World Organisation for Animal Health [WOAH] that requires rapid culling of affected avian populations. Conversely, the Applicant faces the loss of decades of selective breeding work, disruption to valuable commercial and scientific research, and destruction of birds that might no longer pose an active, ongoing risk of transmitting HPAI. Against this backdrop, the Applicant contends that the CFIA has, in issuing the Notice to Dispose and Exemption Denial, disregarded its unique circumstances and fallen short of providing basic procedural fairness.

[3] These two applications address whether the CFIA’s decisions were reasonable and procedurally fair based on facts available to the Agency at the time. This is not an appeal. The Court is not stepping into the shoes of the Agency and making the decisions that the Court feels ought to have been made. Instead, the focus of the review is on the Agency’s reasoning and process.

[4] I dismiss both applications for judicial review. The Agency’s decisions were reasonable based on the record before the decision-maker and were made in a procedurally fair manner.

[5] Courts must respect Parliament’s choice to assign decision-making power to administrative bodies. This respect comes from the principle of separation of powers, a cornerstone of Canadian public law: Wilson v Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, 2015 FCA 17 at para 30. The separation of powers compels courts to respect the legislature’s choice to assign decision-making power to specialized administrative bodies, such as the CFIA, rather than to the judiciary: Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 [Vavilov] at para 30.

[6] Courts must also respect the demonstrated scientific and technical expertise of administrative agencies. In administrative law, courts generally stay out of scientific debates and focus on whether the decision-makers used their expertise to make reasonable and procedurally fair decisions. When Parliament leaves technical or scientific assessments to specialized administrative bodies, it signals that those bodies, not the courts, are best positioned to make judgments on complex, expertise-driven matters. Indeed, Canadian administrative law explicitly warns that courts must not resolve scientific disputes or substitute their own views for those of specialized decision-makers authorized by Parliament to handle such issues: Vavilov at para 93. Judges are experts in law, not in public health, virology, epidemiology, or veterinary medicine. This case undeniably has a strong technical flavour. Both parties have submitted expert affidavits supported by scientific literature. The role of this Court is not to conduct afresh its own studies of that material and decide which science is correct, but to determine whether the CFIA’s decisions were reasonable and procedurally fair based on the record before it.

[7] Judicial review hinges on what was before the decision-maker. With very few exceptions, reviewing courts on judicial review must mentally travel back to the moment when the decision was made, and judge the decision with only the evidence that was before the decision-maker at that moment. Here, the dates are December 31, 2024 for the Notice to Dispose and January 10, 2025 for the Exemption Denial. A reviewing court must assess administrative decisions based exclusively on the information available to the decision-makers at the time they made those decisions: Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada v. Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), 2012 FCA 22 at para 19; Alberta (Information and Privacy Commissioner) v Alberta Teachers’ Association, 2011 SCC 61 at paras 22-26.

[8] If courts conducted judicial review with information that did not exist at the time of decision-making, they would be faulting decision-makers for lacking a crystal ball. No one has the gift of foresight, so courts must avoid reviewing decisions through the lens of hindsight. Therefore, this Court cannot consider “new” evidence, such as the current health status of the ostriches, recent test results, or updated scientific developments that become available only after January 10, 2025, the date of the Agency’s last decision.

[9] Concepts like “reasonableness” and “procedural fairness” have specific meanings in administrative law, defined and refined over years of jurisprudence. Reasonableness asks whether the CFIA’s explanation of its decisions tells a compelling story of how it reached them. Whether the story is compelling enough depends on whether the outcome and reasons are logically supported by the evidence on record, consistent with applicable law, and aligned with the Agency’s past practices and own policies. Reasonableness does not ask whether the outcome is the best or most persuasive course of action.

[10] Procedural fairness is about the decision-making process itself, not the outcome. This assessment asks questions such as whether the Applicant received timely notice, whether the Applicant had meaningful chance to be heard, and whether the CFIA followed the procedures that it promised it would. In this context, fairness is not about whether the substantive outcome feels fair in an everyday understanding, but whether the CFIA adhered to the required legal standards of fairness in the process it followed to reach its decisions. Keeping these legal meanings in mind helps avoid the understandable, but legally misplaced, reaction of equating “harsh outcome” with “unfair decision.”

[11] This Court accepts that there is a real and negative impact of the CFIA’s two decisions on the Applicant and its principals. Beyond the economic loss, the destruction of a long-established ostrich population is also a source of emotional distress, particularly given the decades of work and investment the principals have dedicated to breeding and raising their flock. I have considerable sympathy for them.

[12] Nonetheless, such personal losses must be weighed against the broader public interest in protecting public health and maintaining trade stability. Avian influenza is a virus capable of causing serious harm to both animals and humans, with significant implications for Canada’s poultry businesses and international trade status. To combat threats like this virus, Parliament has authorized the CFIA to act decisively making swift decisions with far-reaching consequences, often under conditions of scientific uncertainty. This is a challenging mandate.

VII. Legal Framework

A(3) The “Stamping-Out” Policy

(a) Overview

[93] The Stamping-Out Policy is Canada’s adaptation of internationally recognized and applied principles for managing HPAI outbreaks. It prioritizes swift elimination of infected populations rather than individual testing and disposal of affected animals. Adopted during and developed following Canada’s first HPAI outbreak in British Columbia in 2004, the Policy aligns with three sequential steps of the stamping-out approach outlined by the World Organisation for Animal Health, Terrestrial Animal Health Code (Paris: WOAH, 2024 [Terrestrial Code]: killing affected animals and those suspected of exposure, disposing of carcasses, and cleansing and disinfecting establishments. Rather than prescribing detailed operational procedures, the Stamping-Out Policy sets only high-level guidance, with specific implementation protocols developed through instruments that translate the broader Policy into individual processes and actionable steps at the field level. This approach has been maintained as a directive of general applicability across different outbreak scenarios, with implementation triggered by specific conditions. Currently, the trigger is defined in the 2022 ERP as laboratory confirmation of H5-subtype HPAI detection in domestic birds within a defined epidemiological unit.

[94] Since its inception, the Stamping-Out Policy has been consistently implemented by the CFIA as its primary strategy for managing HPAI outbreaks. Previously formalized in the 2007 and 2013 Notifiable Avian Influenza Hazard-Specific Plans [the NAI HSPs] and now operationalized through the 2022 ERP, the Policy has been found by the Agency to be the most successful method for eradicating viruses, eliminating environmental contamination, halting transmission, and reducing public health risks. The 2022 ERP sets out a flexible set of guidelines informed by past decisions, and is intended to: 1) cover situations not addressed by an existing policy; 2) allow deviation from or modification of an existing policy; 3) clarify existing policy; or 4) provide a range of adaptable policy options in varying decision-making contexts. Along with other guidelines, this instrument is regularly refined and amended, particularly when sufficiently unique situations necessitate more tailored response mechanisms.

[95] The Stamping-Out Policy’s legal foundation rests in both subsection 48(1) of the Act and the long-established administrative law principle that agencies may use “soft law” instruments to guide the exercise of their discretion without requiring an express statutory mandate: Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers v. Canada (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship), 2020 FCA 196 at para 45, citing Thamotharem at para 56. Scientifically and operationally, the Policy is informed by international standards, particularly those set by WOAH, and by scientific research and practical considerations tailored to Canada’s agricultural, biosafety, and economic realities. Canada’s international commitments and trade agreements also guide the design of the Stamping-Out Policy. They also further reinforce and incentivize the consistent domestic application of the Policy to protect its international reputation and maintain market access.

[96] The Stamping-Out Policy operates as an automatic response protocol once triggered, with discretion reserved for exemptions. The overall process of administering the Policy is multi-stepped. In practice, the very first step of exercising discretion granted under subsection 48(1) to decide whether to destroy or to treat HPAI-infected animals has already been done at the stage when the CFIA, as a delegate of the Minister, decided to develop and adopt the Stamping-Out Policy. As a result, once a triggering laboratory result arises, the Policy functions more as an automatic response protocol rather than an occasion for fresh discretionary judgment. At that point, the roles of relevant CFIA officials are to implement the established procedures for the depopulation and destruction of animals and things, not to decide anew how to respond. As part of this process, the CFIA must define the epidemiological unit, which by default encompasses birds on the entire premises unless scientific evidence justifies a narrower designation. Once such unit is determined, all remaining steps follow according to the prescribed protocol: depopulation, disposal, and disinfection of the entire unit, along with the surveillance periods consistent with WOAH standards. Discretion remains available, however, through the exemption process, where the CFIA evaluates on a case-by-case basis whether certain birds can be exempted under one of three narrow categories.

[97] This predominantly automatic approach, with discretion reserved for case-specific exemptions, reflects the scientific and operational realities of managing HPAI outbreaks: to counteract a virus with high transmissibility, capacity for rapid spread prior to visible clinical symptoms, and potential to seriously harm Canada’s animal health, human health, and international trade interests. This unique decision-making context drives the Stamping-Out Policy’s prioritization of immediate containment and depopulation to prevent further spread. It also explains why both Parliament and the judiciary have consistently endorsed the proactive, preventive philosophy underpinning both the Act and the relevant jurisprudence such as the David Hunt cases, Kohl, Paradis Honey, and River Valley Poultry Farm.

(b) International Obligations and Trade Implications

[98] The adoption and operationalization of the Stamping-Out Policy reflects Canada’s commitment to fulfill binding international obligations, rather than mere domestic policy preference. Annex A(3)(b) of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures has designated the WOAH as the authoritative international standard-setting body for animal health. Unsurprisingly, Canada’s major trade agreements, including Article 9.6 of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement and Chapter 5 of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, explicitly incorporate selected WOAH standards and condition market access to Canada’s trading partners on demonstrated compliance with specific WOAH protocols.

[99] Non-compliance with the Stamping-Out Policy can cause severe national economic consequences through extended trade restrictions in at least two ways. First, Article 10.4.3 of the Terrestrial Code establishes dramatically different waiting periods for regaining HPAI-free status: only 28 days after completing stamping-out and disinfection, versus a minimum of 12 months if stamping-out is not implemented. If the Policy is not adopted or observed, this extended trade restriction period can devastate not just individual farming operations but potentially a significant portion of Canada’s agricultural export sector.

[100] Second, proper adoption and observation of the Stamping-Out Policy are the bedrocks of Canada’s negotiated regional containment zoning agreements, which limit trade impacts to specific geographical areas during outbreaks while allowing exports to continue from unaffected regions. Dr. Suminder Sawhney, Senior Director of Animal Import and Export at CFIA, confirms that deviations from the Policy, even for smaller-scale outbreaks involving uncommon species, could invalidate entire agreements. The resulting comprehensive trade bans could impose economic costs far exceeding the immediate costs of containing individual outbreaks and harm the broader Canadian poultry industry, not just the affected premises.

VIII. Analysis

B. The Stamping-Out Policy is reasonable

[157] I agree with the Respondent that the Stamping-Out Policy is reasonable in law, for it aligns with the text, structure, and purpose of the Act. As explained in the Legal Framework section, Parliament has delegated broad power to the Minister and their delegates under section 48 to protect public health and preserve the health of humans and animals in Canada as well as Canada’s international trade status by proactively preventing and controlling animal disease outbreaks and reducing the risk of zoonotic transmission. The Stamping-Out Policy represents a legitimate policy-level exercise of this discretion, grounded in a science-informed framework that mandates swift depopulation following laboratory confirmation of H5 avian influenza. The Policy is further operationalized by measures aimed at halting viral amplification, permitting sanitization of affected premises, and facilitating the rapid restoration of disease-free status. Additionally, the CFIA complements these measures by providing operators with post-depopulation biosecurity guidance tailored to minimize future infection risks, further promoting the Act’s proactive approach to disease control.

VIII. Analysis

C(2)(c) The Notice to Dispose was Reasonable

[194] I find that Inspector Zhang’s decision to issue the Notice to Dispose was reasonable. He acted within the scope of his designated responsibilities in the broader disease-control process: not as an independent assessor of potential alternatives, but as an implementer of the Stamping-Out Policy as structured through the 2022 ERP. At the stage of issuing the Notice, his role did not require individualized deliberation over alternative disease-management strategies, as those policy determinations had already been made upstream in the policymaking process. I also reject the Applicant’s “common sense” argument that Inspector Zhang should have awaited further confirmatory testing and weighed alternative options before acting. This submission is rhetorical, unsupported by evidence, and ignores the specialized nature of disease-control decision-making. What the Applicant portrays as “common sense” is not some self-evident truth but rather a policy preference masquerading as intuitive reasoning. This Court cannot replace science-based, expertise-driven judgments with counsel’s appeals to lay intuition, particularly in a domain involving the management of potentially serious and fast-evolving animal and public health risk.

VIII. Analysis

C(3)(b) The Exemption Denial was Reasonable

[232] I find that the CFIA’s Exemption Denial was reasonable. Most of the Applicant’s arguments on Exemption Denial are more accurately understood as challenges to the reasonableness of the Stamping-Out Policy and have therefore already been addressed in my above analysis on the Policy’s reasonableness. Accordingly, I have consolidated the remaining relevant objections and distilled them into three arguments that directly concern the reasonableness of the Exemption Denial.

[245] I repeat—judicial review must never be conducted with the benefit of hindsight. Although the infection had later abated with many ostriches surviving, that could not have been foreseen at the time. The Stamping-Out Policy guided the Agency to depopulate the entire exposed epidemiological unit without delay. In such circumstances, the Agency was entitled, indeed compelled by its statutory mandate under the Act, to act decisively once it had gathered sufficient information to make a sound determination. In my view, this approach of soliciting information from multiple sources and proceeding when receiving adequate rather than all solicited information reflects a demonstrated expertise of properly balancing thoroughness and urgency that characterizes effective disease control. Accordingly, I conclude that the Agency acted reasonably in finalizing the Exemption Denial when it did.

X. Conclusion

[270] For the reasons provided, these applications for judicial review are dismissed.

[271] The parties agreed that if the Respondent was successful, a lump sum award of costs in its favour of $15,000 would be appropriate. I agree with this assessment and hereby award costs to the Respondent in that amount.

The animals that are scheduled to be slaughtered are healthy.

The 183 countries that are members of the World Organization for Animal Health clearly do NOT implement the “stamping out” policy for the benefit of the animals, nor do they slaughter them for the health of humans.

Countries follow this policy in order to maintain their status as “Avian Influenza Free” for trade purposes because the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) is a reference organization for the World Trade Organization (WTO) when it comes to international animal health standards.

Article 10.4.6. Recovery of free status
If infection with high pathogenicity avian influenza virus has occurred in poultry in a previously free country or zone, the free status may be regained after a minimum period of 28 days (i.e. two flock-level incubation periods) after a stamping-out policy has been completed.
https://www.woah.org/fileadmin/Home/eng/Health_standards/tahc/2023/chapitre_avian_influenza_viruses.pdf