What if the key to preventing the next global pandemic was discovered on an ostrich farm in a remote town in British Columbia, but the federal government ordered all its birds dead? 

That was the message that made national and international headlines last year when Universal Ostrich Farms launched a 10-month legal battle and social media campaign to stop a government-ordered cull in response to an avian flu outbreak on the farm.

The plight of nearly 400 ostriches in Edgewood, a tiny town 185 kilometres east of Kelowna, garnered support from anti-government protesters, animal rights activists, Canadian politicians and even high-level officials in the Trump administration.

However, a months-long fifth estate investigation reveals the campaign by Universal Ostrich Farms to save its ostriches was built on a foundation of exaggerated and false claims about their birds, business and scientific findings.

Angela Rasmussen, an avian flu virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, reviewed journalists’ findings and dismissed claims the farm was engaged in any groundbreaking research.

“I think calling it scientific work is quite generous,” she told fifth estate co-host Mark Kelley. “I call it a scam.”

In late December 2024, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the federal regulator tasked with managing disease outbreaks in farm animals, determined that a highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 had infected ostriches on the farm. By mid-January, the farm reported that a total of 69 birds had died. 

• Watch the full documentary, “The Ostrich Con,” from the fifth estate on YouTube or CBC-TV on Friday at 9 p.m.

Canada, like the U.S., the United Kingdom and many other countries, has what’s called a “stamping out policy” that requires killing poultry infected or exposed to H5N1 whether they show symptoms or not. Hundreds of millions of birds — mostly commercial chickens — have been culled in Canada and the U.S. in recent years as governments try to contain the spread of avian flu. 

CFIA regulations allow the agency to compensate farmers up to $3,000 an ostrich. However, the agency said the process for determining compensation for Universal Ostrich Farms “is still underway.”

Karen Espersen and Dave Bilinski, owners of Universal Ostrich Farms, said their ostriches were worth more than that — and claimed that the remaining ostriches had developed herd immunity and were healthy due to having superior immune systems. 

They launched a legal case against the CFIA that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which delayed the cull until Nov. 6, 2025.

Over 10 months, they argued on social media and in court they had been conducting valuable scientific research and that their company, Struthio Bioscience Inc., was going to use antibodies harvested from ostrich eggs in treatments for diseases and other ailments, such as obesity, baldness, cholera and celiac disease.

“We can produce the weight loss antibodies or any antibodies through a natural system that’s been around for 70 fricking million years,” Dave Bilinski, who brought ostriches to Canada from Zimbabwe more than 30 years ago, told the fifth estate.

Universal Ostrich repeatedly alleged that the remaining ostriches were scientifically unique and could produce antibodies that could spur research on avian flu treatments. The federal government, they said, was colluding with “Big Pharma” to shut down their upstart research company.

Katie Pasitney, Espersen’s daughter and the farm’s spokesperson, said their antibodies “could change the world” and take away business from pharmaceutical companies.

“Maybe somebody doesn’t want it, like Big Pharma,” Pasitney said in a video posted online last fall. “What would happen if we actually had a therapeutic solution to so many of our problems that was natural?”

Over two decades, Bilinski and Espersen had launched several business ventures, selling ostrich meat, ostrich oil skincare products and even ostrich dog food.

But in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the farm said it was getting into the antibody business and created Struthio, which is Latin for ostrich.

An affidavit filed by Bilinski in the Federal Court of Appeal included business plans for their company, Struthio Bioscience, which claimed the farm was conducting “leading edge” antibody research.

In those documents, they claimed they would use the Edgewood birds to produce a weight loss supplement more effective than Ozempic called OstriTrim and a hair growth product that would reverse balding and hair thinning called OstriGrow.

A close examination of the information provided about Struthio, however, reveals discrepancies in their scientific claims and business operations as they sought to raise millions from investors.

For starters, in a 2024 business plan filed in court, Struthio’s scientific advisory board included prominent Harvard Medical School Prof. Dr. Alessio Fasano, who has authored groundbreaking studies on celiac disease.

When contacted by the fifth estate, Fasano said in an email this was “the first he had heard” of Struthio and he was “disturbed” his name was included without his consent.

When confronted with this contradiction, farm co-owner Bilinski acknowledged Fasano was not on the board, adding that he was “on the list to be.” 

Dr. Lyle Oberg, a former Alberta finance minister and then chair of Alberta Health Services, was listed as a member of Struthio’s board of directors, but told the fifth estate the board never met.

In the affidavit filed in court, Struthio claimed it expected $2.2 billion in revenue by 2029, five years in. 

Oberg, however, said he did not consider that to be realistic.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t agree with the business plan. I don’t agree with that kind of escalation in the numbers.”

Still, farm owners said they were on the verge of medical breakthroughs using ostrich antibodies to combat viral diseases after tests revealed “promising” results.

Universal Ostrich Farms claimed tests conducted by Immune Biosolutions, a Quebec-based antibody research company, in 2020 and 2021 proved their ostrich antibodies were 98 per cent effective at neutralizing COVID-19 and its variants.

Pasitney said the president of the company at the time told them that “if all of your ostrich eggs are like these eggs … this is a game changer.” 

The farm says the partnership ended abruptly without explanation.

However, in an email to the fifth estate, Immune Biosolutions said samples from Universal Ostrich Farms’ ostrich eggs “did not demonstrate the quality, purity or specificity required for therapeutic development.” 

“The collaboration was discontinued on that basis,” the statement said. 

Universal Ostrich Farms contests this, claiming they have test results that suggest otherwise but said they would not provide them to the fifth estate.

In an online interview last February, Pasitney said their farm in Edgewood was “literally a living laboratory of long-standing genetics that we will not be able to replace.”

However, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which made multiple visits to Universal Ostrich Farms, said it had received no documentation to support the claim the birds were genetically unique and that there was no indication scientific studies took place on the Edgewood farm, nor was the environment suitable.

“There was no covered barn. In fact, there was garbage strewn in the farm. The conditions that the birds were in, living in, there was no evidence of any scientific research or any ability to do that,” a senior CFIA official told the fifth estate.

The fifth estate has agreed to not to identify the official, who says a barrage of threats against the CFIA inspectors led to concerns for their safety.

The farm owners credit the research of Yasuhiro Tsukamoto, a Japanese veterinarian who calls himself Dr. Ostrich, for many of the company’s scientific claims.

Tsukamoto is president of Kyoto Prefectural University, where he has his own ostrich laboratory. He has been researching uses for ostrich antibodies since 1999 and uses them in a wide range of products he says he sells through his Japanese and American companies.

The Struthio brochure claims his products, such as face masks, neutralize COVID-19 upon contact and that his weight loss supplement is so effective that one person lost 30 pounds in less than three months without dieting or exercising. 

Tsukamoto’s company, Ostrigen, advertises that his hair growth product shows results “in as little as three months.”

Tsukamoto, who largely avoided commenting on the cull throughout the standoff, agreed to a Zoom interview with the fifth estate.

Tsukamoto says that Struthio overstated the revenue of his companies by more than 200 times, wrongly stating he had $190 million Cdn in annual sales in Japan.

When asked about the farm’s repeated claim that their ostriches were scientifically advanced and that they could not be replaced if they were culled, Tsukamoto said the Edgewood ostriches were “not special.” 

“Their ostriches aren’t particularly different from other ostriches,” said Tsukamoto. “An ostrich is an ostrich.”

Tsukamoto said Struthio was in the early planning phase and that if it had gone ahead, the ostriches would have been used to mass-produce antibodies for weight-loss supplements. 

However, since the flock had been exposed to avian flu, he said, they could no longer be used to produce antibodies for commercial products.

In a recent text exchange with the fifth estate, Karen Espersen appeared to shift away from their earlier suggestions that “Big Pharma” wanted their research killed and was behind the cull. She wrote that she now believes that the CFIA was trying to appropriate their research for themselves.

“The only con is our government stealing our science,” she wrote.

Deb Pion, an Edgewood resident, says people in town call Espersen and Bilinski “grifters.” In her view, the campaign to save their ostriches was really a campaign to line their pockets.  

“This is a new business plan. They’re just ripping the people off and that’s sad,” Pion said.

The farm’s public crowdfunding sites brought in more than $330,000, which doesn’t include private donations via cash or e-transfer. 

Co-owner Espersen said their fundraising went to covering the farm’s legal fees and denies they were profiting from opposing the cull. 

“If that were true, then we wouldn’t be in debt.”

There are numerous civil lawsuits filed in B.C. courts against the farm, Espersen and Bilinski. Several allege they received loans from private lenders and individuals and never repaid them.

In the last three years, the fifth estate has found courts have ordered Espersen and Bilinski and their companies to pay creditors nearly $500,000.

Bilinski acknowledged the farm owes people money but said he intends to pay creditors back.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says the 10-month saga, which ended when about 300 ostriches were culled last November, cost taxpayers nearly $7 million, including security and legal fees, making this the most costly animal cull in Canadian history.

“They left the CFIA to clean up their mess and we get to pay for it,” said Pion.

Still, virologist Rasmussen says the delay in the cull is what concerns her the most, as it raised the potential for the virus to spread and mutate in a way that could make it more susceptible to humans.

In February 2025, a poultry worker in Ohio was hospitalized with the same unique strain of the virus found on the Edgewood farm. The source of that infection remains unknown.

“Could it become a pandemic virus? We don’t know,” said Rasmussen. “But the only way to find out is to have that happen. And so we don’t actually want to find out because that risk would be so catastrophic.”