Earlier this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attempted to intervene with the Canadian government on behalf of an ostrich farm to help protect its flock from being culled following the detection of bird flu last year.

Unfortunately, the efforts of Kennedy and others to save the birds failed, as the entire flock was shot and killed after the Canadian Supreme Court rejected a final appeal from the farm, according to Newsmax.

Kennedy had unsuccessfully argued that the flock of more than 300 ostriches, which had stunningly survived last year's avian influenza outbreak, should be kept alive and studied for any possible scientific breakthroughs on viral immunity.

Ostriches that survived bird flu should be studied, not killed

In December 2024, according to CNN, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a cull order for the flock of around 330 ostriches at the Universal Ostrich Farms in British Columbia, after it was discovered that some of the birds may have become infected with or exposed to bird flu.

The family-owned farm pushed back against that order in court and asserted that the birds and their eggs needed to be studied for their apparent production of disease-fighting antibodies -- a fight that HHS Secretary Kennedy joined in May via a letter to the head of the CFIA that urged them to "consider not culling the entire flock of ostriches."

Kennedy expressed his belief that there was "significant value in studying this population" of birds to determine if there were any "antibody levels and cellular immunity" that could prove useful in developing treatments for the disease.

According to Canada's National Post, the head of the CFIA was reportedly initially open to the ideas put forward by Kennedy about working together on the issue, which the secretary cheered at that time.

"It’s our hope that this collaboration will help us understand how to better protect human and animal populations and perhaps lead to the development of new vaccines and therapeutics," Kennedy said in a statement at the time. "We at HHS are excited about this opportunity for co-operation among our governments in a promising scientific partnership."

Dr. Oz tried to relocate the ostriches to Florida

Newsmax noted that Sec. Kennedy was not alone in attempting to save the ostriches from being culled, as Dr. Mehmet Oz, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, similarly sought to intervene, and even went so far as to offer to relocate the entire flock to his massive personal ranch in Florida.

"The Canadians should stop putting their heads in the sand," Oz said of the situation. "We just have to get [the ostriches] out of Canada. It doesn't help anyone to kill all the birds. It's not just about ostriches. It's about all the birds."

"I'd rather the scientists make the determination -- not bureaucrats," he added. "We found out what happened during the COVID pandemic, when the bureaucrats made all the decisions."

The ostriches were finally executed

Sadly, for the ostriches and the people who loved and cared for them for decades, that collaborative study touted by Kennedy that seemingly held so much promise was not meant to be, as the flock was finally culled on Friday, roughly 10 months after the initial euthanasia order was issued, according to ABC News.

Using a "professional marksman," who ostensibly operated in a "humane way" with immediate CFIA oversight, the birds were herded together into a pen and were shot and killed one by one over the course of several hours on Friday night.

The bodies of the dead birds were then left lying on the ground with a tarp over them, much to the distress of the farm's owners, workers, and supporters.