Thread by @angie_rasmussen

I'm not uncomfortable with an interview. I don't wish to contribute to anti-government extremist propaganda that imposes the will of a few on Canada's health, food security, economy, & $2B poultry export market. I believe in upholding the law.

But I will answer your questions🧵

https://twitter.com/thevivafrei/status/1971218907852619816

1. You can test these ostriches for antibodies. To do it reliably you need to do either a microneutralization or a hemagglutinin inhibition (HAI) assay. These require a high containment lab & trained personnel with HPTA security clearance because they use live virus.

Not many labs in Canada can do these tests. You can't do ELISAs due to cross-reactivity across other flu subtypes. Many overlapping subtypes circulate in birds (H5Nx; HxN1) & humans (H1N1). So you can't just measure antibody binding by ELISA, you must do HAI or microneuts.

Even if you do HAI or microneuts & find antibodies, you don't know what level is protective against infection. We could study that, but I don't think you'd like the experimental design very much. This is a type of pathogenesis study called a challenge study.

You would group ostriches that have low, medium, high, or no antibodies, then infect them with a 10-fold series of H5N1 doses & monitor survival, virus replication, & morbidity. You can quantify what dose of virus can infect/cause disease at what level of antibody.

At the end of a study like this, the animals are euthanized & necropsied so you can measure virus & pathology in internal organs. This would be useful scientific information about understanding protective immunity in ostriches. But the ostriches would still die.

2. The issue is not reinfection of these birds. It's the possibility of current infection (persistent or cryptic) in these birds & the danger that presents to people & other birds (both wild & commercial/backyard flocks) & wild & domestic or peridomestic mammals.

Older ostriches don't get visibly sick from H5N1 but they get infected & shed virus in the absence of observable disease. They also don't always mount strong antibody responses. Cryptic infections could be sustained for months by low level transmission.
tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

Persistent infection is also possible. The is the ostriches just not clearing the virus for months but appearing healthy. Depending on where persistence is occurring & the extent of viral replication, this might not be easily detectable with molecular testing.

The "fear of reinfection" is also not what drives CFIA's stamping out policy. It's Canada's obligation to our international trading partners. The risk to other poultry & people from avian flu is so great that 🇨🇦 agreed to "stamp out" any flock with HPAI.
inspection.canada.ca/en/animal-heal…

Canada has agreed to always implement stamping out as a condition for trade. Not doing so has cut off BC's export market. Not culling these ostriches ultimately jeopardizes Canada's entire $2B poultry export market, severely harming our economy.
inspection.canada.ca/en/animal-heal…

3. I just established that culling is not to prevent reinfection, but to honour the agreements Canada has made & to guarantee that these birds are not going to put Canadians or their animals, wild animals, and our entire poultry export industry at risk for lethal avian flu.

However, on the issue of reinfection, we don't even know which of these birds were infected or which might still be infected. You can't tell if they are infected by looking at them. Testing can be done, but it may be inconclusive for virus if there are low levels of replication.

Testing for antibodies will reveal a prior infection but will not guarantee protective immunity. So if there is a current infection in the flock, it could spread to other flocks, other farms, other animals, and the many people who are constantly in contact with these ostriches

4. The farm is not equipped to perform HAI or microneutralization tests for antibodies. The experts they have engaged are not either. The ostriches can be tested for infection but that is very challenging for a few reasons. The main reason is practicality and cost.

All 398 birds would need to be tested by PCR. Because a cryptic or persistent infection may be at low levels, it will require repeated sampling to confirm that a negative sample is actually negative & not just below the limit of detection of the assay.

This means collecting repeated oral, cloacal, and blood samples from all 398 ostriches repeatedly. That's a significant amount of work with 7 foot tall birds that can disembowel a person by kicking them. This is also very costly. Should Canadian taxpayers foot the bill?

CFIA has limited resources & there are other outbreaks of H5N1 occurring throughout Alberta & Québéc. Should CFIA divert resources from those outbreaks in order to satisfy an unsupported demand from people who are trying to preserve their commercial egg operation?

A major issue is that Canada would still be out of compliance with our commitments to our trading partners if CFIA made an exception here. CFIA told the farm exactly what they needed for an exemption through their established process. The farm failed to demonstrate eligibility.

Testing data is not part of the CFIA's criteria for exemption. If CFIA made an exception, Canada would violate our trade agreements. Our trading partners would close their markets to all Canadian poultry. This would be economically devastating. It's worth $2B annually.

Last but not least, I am American. I am not scared of right-wing propagandists like you, but I am determined not to let you do to Canada what you have done to my home country. Public health laws are for all Canadians' health & safety. Rejecting them endangers all Canadians.

CFIA's role is to regulate Canadian agriculture using evidence-based policy to reduce the risks to Canadian people, animals, & the food supply as much as possible. The current stamping out policy is the only way to guarantee that this risk has been reduced.

The farm has failed over & over again to demonstrate they are capable of carrying out even basic biosecurity. They have misled everyone about what their business actually is (they are selling eggs to make unproven antibody supplements, based on their court filings).

They are actively fundraising, have courted the patronage of Americans like Robert F Kennedy, Jr, who is actively destroying American science & public health. A lot of people in the US & Canada are going to die because of his policy decisions, about both avian flu & vaccination.

For all these reasons, I reject your demands for an interview. You market selfish, objectively harmful lawlessness as "freedom." It is not "freedom" to prioritize the objectives of an extremist minority over the health & safety of the nation. I am not scared of you. I oppose you.

I believe in democracy & upholding the law. Your efforts undermine both. I will not stand idly by while you twist reality to make a case that is scientifically unsupported, economically destructive, & will erode the rule of law at the expense of the health & safety of Canadians.