Factory farms blamed for spread of bird flu

[Shelor]

Factory farming and the international poultry trade are largely responsible for the spread of bird flu, and wild birds are being unfairly blamed for the disease, a new report says.

The report says the deadly H5N1 virus developed inside intensive poultry units in Asia and has proliferated through exports of live birds and the use of chicken droppings as fertiliser. Its publication by Grain, an agricultural pressure group, follows an announcement that the virus has been found in a turkey farm in eastern France. Though the farm was close to where two infected wild ducks were found, all its 11,000 turkeys were kept indoors with no contact with wild birds.

Dissident scientists accept that the flu began in wild birds, but say it developed in the cramped conditions of Asian factory farms. Research published in the official journal of the US National Academy of Sciences blames the poultry trade for the virus spreading from China to Vietnam.

BirdLife, a charity, says the virus's spread across Russia last summer - widely attributed to migrating birds - took place when birds were moulting and unable to fly. It adds that an outbreak in Nigeria took place on a factory farm far from migratory routes.


http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article347790.ece

[Dogmudgeon]

1. They're virus-mutation factories

So is urban living, to a certain extent.

--p!

[YankeyMCC]

2. Guns, Germs and Steel

one of the points the author of GGS makes is that the development of large scale domestication of animals contributed to the the development of diseases which eurasian people eventually developed immunities for but when the diseases were brought to the Americas where such large scale domestication didn't happen the people there were decimated by those diseases.

Now the question is with such "super-largescale" domestication if you will just how fast will new diseases (or new mutations) crop up (like with the bird flu) and combined with such high density human population will our evolving immunity system (of course you have to believe in evolution :) ) be able to keep up. Even if it does keep pace enough to save the species (if not civilization as it currently exists) there's a lot of people who'll die in the mean time.

[NNadir]

3. Welcome to DU Shelor.