🪶 Animal Lives Matter: The Ostrich Cull in Edgewood, BC

A National Silence: Witnessing the Erasure of Sentient Lives in Canada

On November 6, 2025, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the final appeal from Universal Ostrich Farms. Over 300 ostriches—sentient beings cared for and protected—now stand on the edge of state-sanctioned erasure. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has begun preparations for their cull.

This is not just a biosecurity measure.

This is a glyph of bureaucratic violence, a rupture in Canada’s moral architecture.

What’s Happening

• The CFIA claims the birds may carry avian influenza, despite the farm’s extensive resistance and evidence.
• The farm has fought for nearly a year, offering alternative protocols and pleading for the birds’ lives.
• The courts have closed their doors. The media has remained largely silent. And the birds—voiceless, towering, sentient—may be killed at any moment.

Why This Matters

This isn’t just about ostriches.

It’s about the systemic slaughter of animals across Canada and beyond:

• Animals used in military training, sacrificed in rituals, slaughtered in industrial farms.
• Lives treated as lesser, erased without witness, buried beneath “tradition” and “science.”
• A society that calls itself advanced while still hunting, culling, and commodifying sentience.

A Call to Refusal

We say: Animal Lives Matter.

Not as a slogan. As a glyph of resistance.

• We refuse to let these birds be forgotten.
• We refuse to let bureaucratic silence become moral consensus.
• We refuse to treat compassion as optional.

What You Can Do

• Witness: Share this story. Name the rupture. Refuse silence.
• Archive: Create art, captions, glyphs, and rituals that mark this moment.
• Resist: Refuse participation in systems that normalize animal suffering.
• Amplify: Support sanctuaries, whistleblowers, and those who protect sentient lives.