The federal government has now admitted that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the RCMP spent over $900,000 on the agency’s mission to slaughter more than 300 healthy ostriches at Universal Ostrich Farms in Edgewood, B.C.
The numbers were revealed through an order paper question filed by Conservative MP Scott Anderson after months of stonewalling from Ottawa.
Despite Anderson pointedly requesting a complete accounting of all federal dollars spent, the amount the CFIA and RCMP did disclose is merely a glimpse into what was likely millions of tax dollars spent on lengthy court battles to avoid testing the birds to prove their health, and a nearly 50-day occupation of the farm with RCMP deployed at full force.
Nevertheless, for the farmers whose livelihoods and the healthy prehistoric creatures that were wiped out in the kill mission, the totals that have been revealed only add salt to the wounds.
The CFIA alone admits to $444,000, including $9,000 on feed that the farmers would have been happy to provide had they not been barred from caring for their birds weeks before the “cull.”
More than $72,000 was spent on portable toilets and hand-wash stations, and over $32,000 on unspecified “specialized equipment.”
It also paid $100,000 for private security at three of its offices.
Hellbound and Down 