I have stayed pretty quiet on the story of the ostriches and CFIA for a few reasons.
Firstly, this story brings back some memories that I have tried to block from my memory since 1989, or about 35 years ago.
My family went through basically the same thing with CFIA in March of that year.
Our story is very long so I will try to give you the Coles version of it.
We had been holding production sales for many years, and our cattle had sold all across Canada and to 30 US states. In our fall 1988 sale we sold a bred cow to a breeder in North Carolina. Seeing she was due to calve in early February 1989 and seeing the buyer lived so far,away, I told him that I would calve her out and deliver them to Omaha, NE in late March as the buyer was also planning to be there.
We started the export tests and before we could blink, we had CFIA in our yard informing us that our farm and all the cattle were being quarantined. The very next day, they showed up with a crew of helpers and we ran 628 head through the chute, drew blood samples, tagged them with CFIA tags and read tattoos. The following day we had to arrange for cattle trucks to haul all 628 head to slaughter.
We went along with CFIA, because we were told that this one cow had tested positive for brucellosis.
Later that week we found out that every animal we had tested had been negative for brucellosis and we started asking the question "how could this be? How could a cow that tested negative now have had a positive test a few days before? Then we found out that pieces of the "so-called" reactor cow were sent to every lab on the world. Every test result was negative for brucellosis.
This was when our problems with CFIA really started.
I travelled to Ottawa 7 times that summer trying to resolve this situation, and every time I did, I came home with fewer answers and more issues with CFIA. CFIA went so far as to tell CCA that I was s very dangerous individual, and that the CCA should try to ensure that I never owned cattle again. Little did they know that l owned a herd sire with the President of CCA and we were good friends.
When our cattle compensation was arrived at, we were promised that we would receive the compensation within 3 weeks (which is considered to be good for being handled by government). 7 months later we still hadn't received anything for the compensation. I should also add that we had to accept compensation that was about 1/3 the value of the cattle, as the government had not reviewed the compensation values for 15 years.
A very wealthy man in eastern Canada offered to pay all our legal bills, even if we had to go to the Supreme Court.
One day, the Head Veterinarian for CFIA, phoned me. He said he had heard a rumor that we were going to sue CFIA for slaughtering our herd. I told him that we were just investigating our options and hadn't made any decisions. This man told me, in very certain terms, that if we decided to take them to court, that he would destroy us and that my family would lose everything. He assured me that we wouldn't win because he basically made all the rules, including all the health labs were under his control. This man even told me, that my parents would not even have a place to live and I would have to live with that.
After some thought, I made the decision to quit trying to get any justice, as it was almost impossible to win against the government. This depopulation of our herd cost us many hundreds of thousands of dollars, but we survived despite the times I really doubted that we would. Everywhere in Canada, that had purchased cattle from us in the previous two-years were tested and all their offspring and the cows, were also slaughtered despite testing negative. Almost 12,000 head across Canada were tested and all were negative.
When the head vet from Ottawa instructed the vets doing the depopulation to kill all the cats and dogs on our farm, after the cattle were dead, dad stepped up and told them to make sure the hole they dug was big enough for him as well, as the only way he was going to allow them to destroy all the pets was if they shot him first. They finally agreed to allow the cats and dog live, but then CFIA in Ottawa demanded that I provide them with names and addresses of everyone who had purchased semen from us for the previous 10 years as they wanted to test those herds as well. I think he was desperately trying to find a reactor somewhere. We had sold several thousand doses of semen and I basically told them that I would never release the list of semen purchasers to them and I would refuse to release this to them even if they put me in prison or had me murdered.
What i am basically saying is that the CFIA bureaucracy has been messed up for many decades. There are lots of top quality people doing the work on the ground but the top bureaucracy live in ivory towers and I really dont think they care about everyday producers.
My heart goes out to these ostrich producers. They did not have to lose their flock of birds, just like we shouldn't have.
I have never spoke about this publicly until now, as I was afraid some people would take it as sour grapes, or say there was another side of the story that I wasn't telling. That definitely is not the case. I could tell a pile of other stories that would make you just shake your head!
I am also going to say that what happened to us could happen to anyone in Canada. I always supported CFIA and their job of keeping Canada's health status as one of the best in the world. What I do not support is the corruption and power tripping that has been happening at the top levels of government agencies, who seem to want to show everyone just how powerful they are. The head of CFIA is one of the most powerful positions in Canada. The federal vet at all border locations has more power than anyone else in government.
