The ostrich case cost taxpayers $6,810,846, health reporter André Picard has found.
The farm, in comparison, was fined $10,000 as it stubbornly refused to sacrifice the flock in British Columbia where highly-pathogenic avian influenza infected some of the birds.
A billionaire in the United States footed the ostrich owners’ legal bills.
The flock was finally euthanized early this year.
Picard wrote that “the important number that doesn’t get mentioned is what the cost of inaction would have been: the threat to Canada’s $6.8-billion poultry industry. Failure to cull an infected flock could be a violation of trade agreements, and put $1-billion in exports at risk.
In that context, $6.8-million was money well spent. Doing the right thing, no matter how unpopular, often comes at a steep price.
