THE NEW YORK TIMES – What do the U.S. health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the celebrity physician Mehmet Oz and some Canadian animal lovers have in common?
They all want to save a flock of 400 ostriches on a British Columbia farm.
But there’s a catch. The birds were in contact with a deadly virus: H5N1, a type of avian flu.
Canada ordered the birds to be culled after the avian virus spread through Universal Ostrich Farms in Edgewood, British Columbia, a town in the province’s interior, north of Washington State.
The plight of the wobble — a term sometimes used to describe a group of ostriches — has divided Canadians, but the birds have won allies across the border, namely top officials in the Trump administration.
…article continued below
– Advertisement –
Most veterinarians agree that keeping birds alive that may still have active infections and could spread the virus to others is a threat to public health.
Mr. Kennedy last week urged the Canadian authorities not to kill the ostriches but to do further testing to try to better understand the virus.
“We believe significant scientific knowledge may be garnered from following the ostriches in a controlled environment,” Mr. Kennedy said in a letter to the head of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which ordered the culling.
Dr. Oz, who oversees Medicare and Medicaid for the Trump administration, offered to relocate the doomed birds to his 900-acre ranch in Florida.
John Catsimatidis, a billionaire Republican businessman who owns a New York City radio station, made a plea to save the birds on his radio program, demanding “truth, justice and the American way for the ostriches up in British Columbia” …
…article continued below
– Advertisement –