As the number of birds culled in an avian flu outbreak on turkey farms near Strathroy, Ont., approaches 100,000, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) says it won’t let its staff do media interviews for fear they will be subject to harassment or even death threats.
One expert calls it “problematic,” saying the public is missing vital information during an outbreak.
The CFIA also isn’t providing a spokesperson for media interviews. The agency said that since it culled just over 300 ostriches after an avian flu outbreak at a farm in B.C. last month, staff have been harassed and sent death threats.
“In the current climate, any CFIA employee who is publicly identified in relation to our avian influenza response (regardless if they are in B.C. or Ontario) immediately becomes the target of harassment, including death threats, from individuals opposed to the CFIA’s eradication policy in British Columbia at the Universal Ostrich Farm,” the agency said in a statement to CBC News.
That whole BC ostrich debacle really highlights how much of a frenzy people get up over it. CFIA would need to have a media budget of millions if they’d want to handle interviews like that.
They don’t have to do more interviews. It takes exactly the same number of press releases to explain themselves regardless of how large the public interest is. It doesn’t scale like that unless you are trying to monetize public interest.