FWD: Time to clean up the act

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This article is from The Star Online

URL:

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2004/8/25/focus/8720654 & sec=focus

 

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Wednesday August 25, 2004

Time to clean up the act

 

 

THE authorities are on the alert following a discovery of the deadly bird flu

virus of the H5N1 strain in some chickens in Kelantan.

 

There has been no talk of this disease throughout the last millennium until it

started surfacing in Hong Kong in the 1990s. Why has the disease not surfaced

years before in poultry farming?

 

It is the present-day modern agriculture that is encouraging animal disease.

Farming methods currently employed are most unnatural and unhygienic.

 

We should be questioning the whole business of animal rearing. Animals are

handled and treated in an unacceptable manner, but people choose to turn a blind

eye to this issue, in favour of quick and lucrative profits and to satisfy the

ever-growing demand for meat.

 

As simple farms evolve into high-output “factories”, many animals never see the

light of day. Their whole lives, from birth to death, are spent confined in

cramped and filthy surroundings.

 

They do not get any exercise or fresh air. Diseases can so easily spread in

dirty, faeces-tainted surroundings, where animals are in such close contact with

each other.

 

The chickens’ growth is also speeded up using various unnatural chemicals that

include hormones and low doses of antibiotics.

 

These animals become resistant to antibiotics, which becomes critical when

these antibiotics are needed to fight an infection.

 

Avian flu is spread through birds’ droppings. When poultry is taken for

slaughter, there is no guarantee that the cleaning methods will rid the birds of

infectious material.

 

During surveys conducted by the Consumers Association of Penang, we have found

samples of chicken meat being sold in the markets were contaminated with the

bacteria E.coli.

 

There have been so many changes in the breeding of animals, not least among

them, chickens. We are creating our own problems through so-called scientific

methods. It is a doomsday phenomenon.

 

With the current concerns about bird flu, there is an urgent need to look into

and initiate a major revamp of the whole system of animal rearing and handling.

 

 

S.M. MOHAMED IDRIS,

 

President,

 

Consumers Association of Penang.

 

(via e-mail)

 

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