Supreme Court of Canada to decide fate of 400 B.C. ostriches

Ostriches won reprieve from cull when Supreme Court of Canada took up the case

OTTAWA, Ontario, Canada––A forthcoming Supreme Court of Canada verdict concerning the fate of nearly 400 ostriches may be the biggest decision of the court in an animal-related case in close to six years.

The verdict will hinge upon whether the Supreme Court of Canada finds persuasive written arguments from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency,  due to be submitted by October 3,  2025.

Ostriches were exposed to H5N1

The ostrich flock,  belonging to Universal Ostrich Farms of British Columbia,  were ordered to be culled on December 31,  2024,  after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency found two ostriches dead on the premises from the highly contagious avian influenza H5N1,  and confirmed that “at least 69 of the birds had died of flu-like illnesses by the end of January 2025,”  reported Jon Cohen for Science on September 29,  2025.

About 1.8 million domestic poultry have been culled in Canada due to H5N1 exposure in 2025 alone.  Altogether the Canadian poultry toll due to H5N1 exposure since 2022 is upward of 8.7 million,  more than half of them exposed along the Pacific flyway in British Columbia.  The U.S. toll over the same years is more than 166 million.

“Ostriches are considered poultry,  and Canada complies with the recommendations of the World Organization for Animal Health,  which call for ‘stamping out’ flocks infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses before they spread further,  to protect poultry,  people,  and international trade,”  Cohen explained.

“Save Our Ostriches”

But Universal Ostrich Farms owners Karen Esperson and Dave Bilinski balked at the cull order,  “fought back in court and launched a campaign,  Save Our Ostriches,  that has raised more than $110,000.  Supporters have set up camps outside the farm,”  Cohen wrote.

The campaign culminated with a September 24,  2025 stay of execution issued by the Supreme Court of Canada,  pending a full review of the case.

Esperson and Bilinski,  Cohen summarized,  “argue culling is unnecessary because the birds are no longer infectious and likely have immunity against H5N1.  They are backed by a coalition of supporters that includes animal rights activists,  a grassroots group named Freedom Rising that criticized government overreach during the COVID-19 pandemic,  and Robert F. Kennedy Jr,  head of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Robert F. Kennedy & friends

“Mehmet Oz,  the celebrity physician who heads the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services,  has offered to move the ostriches to his private farm in Florida,”  Cohen added.

Kennedy,  U.S. National Institutes of Health director Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya,  and U.S. Food & Drug Administration chief Martin Makary argued in a May 22,  2025 letter to Canadian Food Inspection Agency president Paul MacKinnon that keeping the ostriches alive is essential to allow scientists to study  “both antibody levels and cellular immunity” in the H5N1 survivors,  “and offered their ‘full support and assistance’ for a ‘long-term body of research,’”  Cohen said.

The gist of the case against the ostrich flock at this point,  since the survivors all appear to be healthy,  more than 10 months after their exposure to H5N1 from migratory waterfowl,  is simply that allowing anyone to disobey a cull order issued for public health or livestock health reasons would set a problematic legal precedent.

Court refused to hear 2020 appeal for cattle dog

The most recent previous Supreme Court of Canada decision of note pertaining to animals appears to have come on January 16,  2020,  when the court refused to hear an appeal from British Columbia dog owner Susan Santics on behalf of her Australian cattle dog Punky.

Impounded in Vancouver after repeated biting incidents,  Punky was ordered euthanized by three levels of the British Columbia court system,  reaching the Supreme Court of Canada more than a year after a three-judge panel of the British Columbia Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the initial euthanasia order.

“Given Punky’s past behavior,  temperament,  and lack of rehabilitation prospects,”  wrote British Columbia appellate justice Patrice Abrioux,  “it was clearly open to the provincial court judge to conclude that the dog posed an unacceptable risk to the public and ought to be destroyed.”

Seal hunt ruling

During the first sixteen years of the present century,  however,  the Supreme Court of Canada heard or at least reviewed major animal-related cases almost every year.

First came a 9-0 unanimous ruling on February 22, 2002 that the authority of the Canadian federal government  to preserve the economic viability of not only the annual Atlantic Canada seal hunt,  but of Canadian fisheries in general,  gives the Canadian federal government the constitutional right to ban the sale of whitecoated harp seal and bluebacked hooded seal pup pelts.

This had been done since the 1995 resumption of offshore commercial sealing,  to protect the public image of the hunt.

The verdict allowed Ottawa to resume prosecuting 101 sealers for allegedly illegally killing as many as 25,000 seal pups in 1996.

OncoMouse patent case

Also in 2002 the Supreme Court of Canada rejected an application for a Canadian patent on OncoMouse,   a mouse genetically engineered to be vulnerable to human forms of cancer,  bred for use in biomedical research.

Toronto lawyers Lesil Bisgould and Clayton Ruby (1942-1922) argued successfully that only nature creates on animals.

“That was a fundamental moment in the development of animal-rights law in Canada,”  Bisgould told media afterward.  “It was a huge victory just that the court said,  ‘We agree that the animal-rights perspective is one that has to be heard.’”

The Supreme Court of Canada did eventually allow a relatively narrow patent on OncoMouse.

Aboriginal treaty rights to hunt & fish

Building on a 1984 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that Reginald Sparrow,  a member of the Musqueam band,  had an aboriginal treaty right to fish for salmon that superseded the right of the federal government to regulate the fishery,  the court on September 18,  2003 ruled 9-0 on September 18, 2003 that mixed-ancestry descendants of French settlers and Native Americans,  called Metis, have the same treaty rights to hunt and fish as full-blooded Native Americans––but only if they can demonstrate a direct link to their historical community,  for instance by having ancestrally remained on First Nations reservations.

Deer & narwhals

A related issue came before the Supreme Court of Canada in December 2006,  when the court overturned the convictions of Tsartlip Indian Band members Ivan Morris and Carl Olsen for violating the British Columbia Wildlife Act by hunting deer at night.

This time,  though,  the verdict was only 4-3.

On March 10,  2016 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that former Nunavet police officer Gregory Logan,  who had legally acquired narwhal tusks from Inuit hunters in the Canadian north,  could be extradited to the U.S. to face charges for allegedly smuggling the tusks into Maine for intended resale.

Tiger keeper won right to keep tiger who killed him

Norman Buwalda,  66,  of Southwold,  Ontario,  then chairperson of the Canadian Exotic Animal Owners Association,  in 2004 persuaded the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn a local bylaw that sought to force him to quit keeping tigers.

The bylaw was adopted after one of Buwalda’s tigers severely mauled a ten-year-old boy,  who lost his esophagus.

“According to reports at the time,”  wrote Barry Kent Mackay for Born Free USA,  “the boy will probably have to be tube-fed for the rest of his life.  We’re not sure exactly what happened to the youngster,”  Mackay added,  “because soon afterward the boy virtually vanished,  presumably his mother having been paid off to avoid a lawsuit.”

The Buwalda victory backfired when Bulwalda himself was fatally mauled by one of his tigers on January 10,  2010.

Upheld Ontario pit bull ban

A three-judge panel of the Supreme Court of Canada on June 11,  2009 refused to hear Ontario dog keeper Catherine Cochrane’s last appeal in an attempt to overturn the 2005 Dog Owners Liability Act.

The act,  in effect since January 2006,  but lightly enforced in recent years and opposed by current Ontario prime minister Doug Ford,  bans from Ontario any dog who “has an appearance and physical characteristics that are substantially similar” to those of pit bull terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers,  American Staffordshire terriers,  and American pit bull terriers.”

Rejecting an appeal filed by Clayton Ruby on behalf of Cochrane,  the Supreme Court of Canada upheld an October 2008 ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeals that the pit bull ban “is not arbitrary or grossly disproportionate in light of the evidence that pit bulls have a tendency to be unpredictable,  and that even apparently docile pit bulls may attack without warning or provocation.”

Ruled for anti-salmon farming activist

British anti-salmon farming activist Don Staniford,  originally from Merseyside,  now living in Scotland,  spent several years in Canada,  beginning in 2004,  mostly working for the British Columbia environmental group Friends of Clayoquot Sound.

There he was sued in 2005 by the Creative Salmon Company Ltd. for alleged defamation in connection with having issued two media releases questioning the company’s use of malachite green,  an antibiotic and suspected carcinogen,  on fish sold for human consumption.

In January 2007,  Supreme Court of British Columbia judge ordered Staniford to pay Creative Salmon Company $85,000 in damages and legal fees.

Staniford appealed  however,   and won a new trial.  The Supreme Court of Canada then ruled it would not hear a subsequent appeal by the company.

A further case against Staniford brought by Mainstream Canada,  the  second largest British Columbia salmon farming company,  was dismissed by a British Columbia provincial court judge.

Staniford later returned to the United Kingdom.

(See Scotland to stop shooting seals to save salmon farm profits––but not until 2021.)

Lucy the Edmonton Valley Zoo elephant

A defeat for animal advocates came in April 2012,  when the Supreme Court of Canada refused to order the City of Edmonton to retire a 36-year-old elephant named Lucy from the Edmonton Valley Zoo and send her to a U.S. sanctuary.

Now fifty years old,  Lucy remains at the Edmonton Valley Zoo,  where she has been housed alone for 18 years.

Almost two years after the Supreme Court of rejected the appeal on behalf of Lucy,  the court rejected an appeal from Edmonton photographer Daniel Onischuk on behalf of feral rabbits living in Canmore,  Alberta.  Onischuk held that the rabbits should be sterilized and relocated,  but they were culled instead for allegedly “attracting predators such as coyotes and cougars” into Canmore,  which is just east of Banff National Park.

Conservation officer refused to shoot baby bears

Probably the most celebrated animal-related case to come before the Supreme Court of Canada in recent years involved former British Columbia conservation officer Bryce Casavant.

Casavant on July 8, 2015 refused to shoot two baby black bears whose mother had been shot for repeatedly breaking into homes near Port Hardy.

Fired by the British Columbia Conservation Officer Service,  Casavant won a June 4,  2020 ruling from the British Columbia Supreme Court of Appeal that he had been dismissed illegally.

The British Columbia Government Employees Union and the British Columbia government then appealed successfully against reinstating Casavant.

Humane Society of Canada case

In 2016 the Supreme Court of Canada revoked the tax-exempt status of the Humane Society of Canada,  originally a Canadian subsidiary of the Humane Society of the U.S.,  nine years of litigation after the Humane Society of Canada flunked a Canadian Revenue Agency audit over alleged misuse of donated funds by Michael O’Sullivan,  the only chief executive the organization ever had.

“Among expenses flagged by the auditors examining the charity’s 2006 income tax return,”  summarized Dale Brazao and Mary Ormsby for the Toronto Star,  “were:  $27,000 in superhero-themed comic book purchases;  $22,000 in meals eaten mainly in Toronto;  a $4,000 O’Sullivan family trip to Disneyland in California;  $1,800 in alcohol,  and a $67-charge at LaSenza Girl lingerie store.”

O’Sullivan died from Lou Gehrig’s disease on February 10, 2021.

(See Holy cow! Humane Society of Canada loses last bid to keep tax-exempt status.)

Let incest & porn video perp walk on bestiality count

Probably the most controversial Supreme Court of Canada ruling of the present century in an animal-related case was a 6-1 verdict released on November 9,  2016 that a convicted sex offender,  identified only as D.L.W. to protect his victims,  was not guilty of bestiality after forcing his 15-year-old stepdaughter to submit to sexual acts with the family dog in connection with making a video.

The majority opinion,  authored by now retired Justice Thomas Cromwell,  held that the Canadian Criminal Code provisions on bestiality did not adequately define which sexual acts with animals were prohibited.

Defendant D.L.W. was convicted after a 38‑day trial of multiple other sexual offenses against both of his two stepdaughters,  committed over the course of 10 years.

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