Report Blames Flu on Industrial Poultry Farms Not Backyard Birds

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2006/2006-02-27-01.asp


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"Everyone is focused on migratory birds and backyard chickens as the problem," says Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN. "But they are not effective vectors of highly pathogenic bird flu. The virus kills them, but is unlikely to be spread by them."

Kuyek says the spread of industrial poultry production and trade networks have created ideal conditions for the emergence and transmission of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Once inside densely populated factory farms, viruses can rapidly become lethal and amplify, says Kuyek. "Air thick with viral load from infected farms is carried for kilometers, while integrated trade networks spread the disease through many carriers: live birds, day-old-chicks, meat, feathers, hatching eggs, eggs, chicken manure and animal feed." Chicken feces and bedding from poultry factory floors are common ingredients in animal feed.
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in the feed, just like mad cow

and here is the kicker:

"A burning question is why governments and international agencies, like the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), are doing nothing to investigate how the factory farms and their byproducts, such as animal feed and manure, spread the virus," says Kuyek.

Instead, he says, they are using the bird flu crisis as an opportunity to further industrialize the poultry sector.
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money makes the bushmilhousegang go round, the bushmilhousegang go round, the bushmilhousegang go round, they sang.

nt

by growing those they consider to be "cost effective" chickens.

For meat: white ( can't have the consumer actually seeing a black feather woohoo), birds that get fat quick in tight spaces, and no survival instinct or cold-hardiness required. Any lack of immunity to disease that might proliferate in such a small gene pool is dealt with through the use of massive antibiotics.

For eggs: hens with zero ability to raise their own young, but able to make a lot of eggs fast in a very teeny space.

The numbers of some of the rare, hardy breeds are endangered. Just as they prefer their Americans, Big Business favors a stupid bird who is easy to fatten, amuse and subdue.