The Supreme Court of Canada is set to issue a decision next week on whether to hear a last-ditch appeal against an order to cull a flock of ostriches at a British Columbia farm.
A list of leave applications that will be ruled upon next Thursday includes the challenge by Universal Ostrich Farms to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s Dec. 31, 2024, order to cull the flock after an outbreak of avian flu was detected.
If the court decides not to hear the case and lifts a stay on the cull, there will be no legal impediment to the killing of hundreds of birds, while if leave to appeal is granted, a final decision on the fate of the flock would come after a hearing.
Katie Pasitney, the farm’s spokesperson and daughter of one of the owners, said in a Facebook post that her “stomach sank a little bit” on Friday. She said the world needs to pray for them.
“I walk in faith as my feet hit the ground each day. This story has already been written. The ending has been decided, we just need to believe,” she said.
Legal experts have said that the court is unlikely to take up the case, expressing doubt about any lingering legal controversies it could clear up after both the Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal sided with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Emmett Macfarlane, a political-science professor at the University of Waterloo, said last month that the odds of the High Court hearing the farm’s appeal are “very low.”
He said if there had been disagreement among lower courts over the power of the federal agency, that would make it “a much more natural case for the Supreme Court of Canada to clarify the law itself.”
Paul Daly, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, said he’d be surprised if the court decides to hear the case because the legal issues involved are “not particularly novel or complicated.”
Daly said in an interview in September that the social media uproar around the ostrich farm won’t influence the Supreme Court “one way or the other.”
“I think it’s more likely that the Supreme Court ignores the public outcry and just takes a dispassionate view of the merits of the application.”
The owners of the farm outside the tiny community of Edgewood in southeastern B.C. have been fighting the cull for 10 months, arguing the surviving ostriches show no signs of illness and should be spared.
The farm’s lawyer, Umar Sheikh, has said the Supreme Court of Canada has an “extremely high threshold” to meet for cases it will hear.
Neither Sheikh, Pasitney nor anyone from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency could be immediately reached for comment.
The farm’s submissions to the High Court said the lower courts left the door open for it to clarify whether there should be a right for administrative decisions to be reconsidered in the face of fresh evidence or a change of circumstances.
“National guidance is needed to close this systemic gap so that temporary emergency orders do not persist despite fundamentally changed facts,” the farm’s leave application said.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in its response documents submitted to the Supreme Court of Canada that the case doesn’t raise any issues of “public importance” for the court to hear.
The agency said the farm’s disagreement with the decision, its disbelief of “judicial findings of fact about risks to public health, animal health, and trade,” or its preference for a different outcome “does not provide a basis for this court’s intervention on appeal.”
“The Federal Court and Court of Appeal both emphatically upheld the reasonableness of CFIA’s decisions. (Universal Ostrich Farms’) application for leave to appeal largely repeats or reformulates arguments the Court of Appeal found raise no serious issue,” the inspection agency’s response said.
The CFIA, which says ostriches that appear healthy may still spread the disease, took control of the birds’ enclosure in September.
The cull had appeared imminent, but the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay until it decides whether to hear the farm’s case.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 31, 2025.
The Canadian Press
