Tue, 11 Jan 2005

Bird flu kills Vietnamese girl

This could be huge news: bird flu is very contagious, and a repeat of the 1918 pandemic would make the recent tsunami look like a kindergarten picnic.

But notice the picture at the left - it's a "modern poultry plant", probably for egg production, probably in Southeast Asia. Note how the birds are crammed and caged - once an illness starts, it's spreads very rapidly under these conditions, and will usually destroy a whole flock before the sick birds can be identified and removed.

Which is precisely why our chickens are free range: they have open access at all times to the outdoors, and the run of our pastures, paddocks and even front yard. So far, I've not lost a single chicken to disease. I've lost a few meat birds to drowning, a few more to predators, and even a few to overeating, but none to microbes. That's a good thing. It keeps my investment intact, and insures that I won't be spreading disease with my drumsticks or eggs.

But factory farms don't have the same priorities: their goal is a rapid return on an investment, and if they happen to lose a few birds, well, that's a cost of doing business. If they happen to lose an entire flock, well, that's a bigger cost, but still, just a cost of doing business. The flock can be replaced, right back into the same tightly controlled enviroment that caused the problems in the first place. And the cycle starts again.

These dangers will remain with us until and unless we modify our agricultural practices in accordance with common sense. And as long as corporations run the farms, I despair of that ever happening.

A 16-year-old girl has died of bird flu in Vietnam, the country's third death from the virus in less than two weeks, a doctor said.

(link) [CNN]

/Agriculture | 1 writeback | permanent link

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orangeguru wrote

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