Aidan McLaren-Caux is used to being stopped in grocery store aisles by people who want to discuss issues as a local politician, but a federal agency’s decision to cull a flock of 400 ostriches in Edgewood, B.C., has brought the region and local officials “an extraordinary amount of attention.”
“A lot of the attention has come from elsewhere, so other parts of the province, and the country and even internationally,” he said Friday. “It’s definitely a topic of conversation at coffee shops.”
McLaren-Caux is a board vice-chair with the Regional District of Central Kootenay, which passed a resolution Thursday not to allow the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to dispose of ostrich carcasses in its landfills pending further testing of the birds for avian flu.
The agency ordered the birds destroyed in December after avian flu was found on the farm and a Federal Court ruled to uphold the decision earlier this week. More than 8.7 million birds have been culled in British Columbia since a highly infectious form of the avian flu showed up on farms starting in the spring of 2022.
The board resolved “to withhold acceptance, at any landfill” of ostrich carcasses from the farm,…
Read the full article here