Creating an Investigative Documentary About Canada's Killing of Healthy Ostriches

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Well with us today is Drea Humphrey and she’s with the bureau chief and reporter of the Director of Revenues in Canada. And we got to be friends because we tried to save the ostriches in British Columbia.

0:16 And right now she’s doing her documentary and well, uh, Drea, give us an update. What the heck is going on? Everybody was so sad that the well, the ostriches were executed. I mean, there’s no other way to say it. I mean it’s because they were all shot. Tell us what happened.

0:35 What are the feelings of the people.

0:37 Speaker 2 You tell us, Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the show for this important matter. And you’re right. You tried. The Americans tried. I tried as a journalist with my boots on the ground at the farm, staying there for weeks to save these healthy ostriches. Just to remind your audience, these birds, hundreds of them, had

0:57 never been tested. The ones that were slaughtered on November sixth to the seventh had never actually been tested from the av and flu. A flu had swept through the herd a year prior before the Canadian government actually called them in a way that even industry insiders as well as animal rights are saying is in humane. So you

1:19 tried very hard. Thank you for that. You got the attention of your top medical officials, Secretary of Health, you got the FDA on it, and that actually brought some legitimacy to what the farmers were saying all along, is pleased.

1:36 Speaker 1 Yes, it was Secretary Kennedy and doctor Oz and the FDA, and they wanted to test them. And the CFIA in Canada refused to pay attention to the Secretary Kennedy.

1:53 Speaker 2 They refused, that’s our Canadian Food Inspection Agency, our agriculture minister. No one ever explained why they wouldn’t just test the birds. And let’s not forget the science. These weren’t just your regular birds. They’re non poultry, they’re prehistoric creatures. They lived for many years, some of them were over twenty five years old, and the farm had transitioned them into promising

2:15 antibody science. So now that they possibly had recovered from the Avian flu, the argument was, let’s save these birds. Let’s work with the US on seeing what we can find out from these antibodies to fight the avian flu.

2:29 So that maybe we don’t have to mask all farms and livelihoods while we’re at it.

2:35 Speaker 1 Understood, and they refused to test the animals. They refused to talk to anybody. They refused to talk to the American ambassador, they refused to talk to Secretary Kennedy. I just didn’t understand it, and I was very alarmed by it.

2:56 But I guess next the way it is in Canada, I don’t know. What do you think? I mean, you’re a Canadian.

3:05 Speaker 2 It seems more and more, you know, when an agency the government can seize private property, take control of private animals, block independent journalists from trying to capture it, effectively, block independent testing, do all of this without happening to give any explanation. Questions need to be asked. That’s why we’re doing a documentary probing into why was the answer no?

3:29 Why did these birds have to die? And we have recently found out that Canadian government spent six point seven million dollars at least to do this call during a time where they could have said, hey, let’s get a deal.

3:43 There’s some trade tensions. Let’s let’s work with our neighbors, our friends in America to explore this Avenue and while we’re at it, let’s save these birds. So we’re getting to the bottom of why. That’s what what I was out interviewing you for recently, so that we could show the people, ay why this mattered to you, which I

4:03 felt like the media didn’t do a great job of doing.

4:06 Speaker 1 So you’re working on a documentary that’s going to be When will we be finished and where’s it going to be showing?

4:14 Speaker 2 Right now? I’m at our capital, I’m in Ottawa. We’re hoping to have it finished hopefully. I don’t want to say for sure, but by next month. We’ve been running around across the country internationally. You can find out the information of that at our website called Ostrich Farmdocumentary dot com.

4:30 I think it’s going to be quite the eye opener.

4:33 Speaker 1 Well, thank you so much for coming on and we’d love to distribute it in the United States and help you out on that because the people of America, and when I say America, I mean Canada and the United States have to know the truth because there’s so many things happening.

4:51 Speaker 2 Agreed, Thank you so much again, Thank you