Global Poultry Industry is the Root of Bird Flu

[Guest guest]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_grain_pr_060303_global_poultry_indus.htm

 

 

March 3, 2006

 

Global Poultry Industry is the Root of Bird Flu

by GRAIN

 

 

http://www.opednews.com

 

REPORT SAYS GLOBAL POULTRY INDUSTRY IS THE ROOT OF THE BIRD FLU CRISIS

 

Small-scale poultry farming and wild birds are being unfairly blamed

for the bird flu crisis now affecting large parts of the world. A new

report from GRAIN shows how the transnational poultry industry is the

root of the problem and must be the focus of efforts to control the

virus. [1]

 

The spread of industrial poultry production and trade networks has

created ideal conditions for the emergence and transmission of lethal

viruses like the H5N1 strain of bird flu. Once inside densely

populated factory farms, viruses can rapidly become lethal and

amplify. Air thick with viral load from infected farms is carried for

kilometres, 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. [2]

 

" 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. "

 

For example, in Malaysia, the mortality rate from H5N1 among village

chicken is only 5%, indicating that the virus has a hard time

spreading among small scale chicken flocks. H5N1 outbreaks in Laos,

which is surrounded by infected countries, have only occurred in the

nation's few factory farms, which are supplied by Thai hatcheries. The

only cases of bird flu in backyard poultry, which account for over 90%

of Laos' production, occurred next to the factory farms.

 

" The evidence we see over and over again, from the Netherlands in 2003

to Japan in 2004 to Egypt in 2006, is that lethal bird flu breaks out

in large scale industrial chicken farms and then spreads, " Kuyek explains.

 

The Nigerian outbreak earlier this year began at a single factory

farm, owned by a Cabinet minister, distant from hotspots for migratory

birds but known for importing unregulated hatchable eggs. In India,

local authorities say that H5N1 emerged and spread from a factory farm

owned by the country's largest poultry company, Venkateshwara Hatcheries.

 

A burning question is why governments and international agencies, like

the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, are doing nothing to

investigate how the factory farms and their byproducts, such as animal

feed and manure, spread the virus. Instead, they are using the crisis

as an opportunity to further industrialise the poultry sector.

Initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small

producers and restock farms with genetically-modified chickens. The

web of complicity with an industry engaged in a string of denials and

cover-ups seems complete.

 

" Farmers are losing their livelihoods, native chickens are being wiped

out and some experts say that we're on the verge of a human pandemic

that could kill millions of people, " Kuyek concludes. " When will

governments realise that to protect poultry and people from bird flu,

we need to protect them from the global poultry industry? "

 

[1] The full briefing, " Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role

in the bird flu crisis " , is available at

http://www.grain.org/go/birdflu.

Spanish and French translations will be posted shortly.

 

[2] Chicken faeces and bedding from poultry factory floors are common

ingredients in animal feed.