Factory Farms Blamed for Spread of Bird Flu
brian | 28.02.2006 01:49
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by Geoffrey Lean
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.
by Geoffrey Lean
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.
Factory Farms Blamed for Spread of Bird Flu
by Geoffrey Lean
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://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0226-02.htm
by Geoffrey Lean
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://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0226-02.htm
brian
Comments
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Cat snotters and cat culls
01.03.2006 02:35
Lots of recent reports and posts seem to justify the risk they present by diminishing avian flu panic as an over-hyped establishment plot. I personally don't feel more worried by bird flu than any of the other myriad of threats that face me but I am curious if the mass of the UK would agree to a cat cull on health grounds as readily as we agree with bird culls. If I knew for a fact my cat had this flu then I still wouldn't kill it, because I know the species barrier between me and my cat is different to the species barrier between cats and birds. From what I have observed of parents they will readily kill anything that poses the slightest threat to their offspring.
Cats Can Catch and Spread Bird Flu, Study Says
Germany put on alert as cat dies of bird flu
Danny
Killing several birds with one stone.
01.03.2006 09:49
It is convenient to attach this alleged flu to birds, because they migrate and it can explain why it appears so rapidly in diverse places, like Nigeria.
It poses no threat to fowl and certainly does not threaten humans, but still, mass vaccination will be made mandatory and Tamiflu sales will rocket and Glaxo's profits will exceed their current record levels.
Then, and only then, will you see people dying in large numbers from a "new" disease. Remember, AIDS was distributed through a small-pox immunisation program, when there was no threat of small pox.
Fowl Play
bird brain
01.03.2006 15:20
'They' hate famers ? Me too !
>It is convenient to attach this alleged flu to birds, because they migrate and it can explain why it appears so rapidly in diverse places, like Nigeria.
Alleged flu ? What is killing all these people then ?
>It poses no threat to fowl and certainly does not threaten humans, but still, mass vaccination will be made mandatory and Tamiflu sales will rocket and Glaxo's profits will exceed their current record levels.
Have you experience of mandatory medication ? Maybe you should take it, your mixing up of theories seems slightly mad and self-contradictory. There have been hundreds of laboratory confirmed human deaths - so is this disease a deadly invention of Porton Down or a massive conspiracy involving every government and doctor involved ?
GSK have a massive place in Barnard Castle, maybe you should burn it down.
Here is the excellent article quoted above on how outbreaks that have been blamed on migratory birds are probably spread within the poultry industry. Note how rational it is.
>Then, and only then, will you see people dying in large numbers from a "new" disease.
Lots of people already voluntarily take Tamiflu but they aren't dying off.
>Remember, AIDS was distributed through a small-pox immunisation program, when there was no threat of small pox.
Smallpox killed between 300 million and 500 million people in the 20th century alone.
Danny
Fowl Play
02.03.2006 15:07
Humpty Dumpty
GSK blast
03.03.2006 00:07
LONDON (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline said one of its factories in Scotland making active ingredients for drugs had been damaged by a blast on Thursday, injuring four employees.
I suspect Fowl Play...I'd better watch what I say in future.
Daany