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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] INFORMATION ALERT: BIRD FLU AND SMALL FARMS
  • Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 23:43:17 -0500


From: "Bill Sanda: Weston A. Price Foundation" <info@westonaprice.org>
Date: March 6, 2006 6:02:31 AM EST
Subject: INFORMATION ALERT: BIRD FLU AND SMALL FARMS

WESTON A. PRICE FOUNDATION
INFORMATION ALERT
March 4, 2006

Report says global poultry industry is the root of the bird flu crisis

Source: GRAIN

http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=65635140&u=604580
- -----------------------------------------------

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. The full briefing, "Fowl
play: The poultry industry's central role in
the bird flu crisis," is available at
http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=65635140&u=604581.
Spanish and French
translations will be posted shortly.

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 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.

"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
chickens is only 5 per cent, 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 per
cent 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 [2006] 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 Organization,
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
industrialize 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 realize that to
protect poultry and people from bird flu, we need to protect them from the global
poultry industry?"

*****************************************************************

Bill Sanda
Executive Director
Weston A. Price Foundation
bsanda@westonaprice.org
Our postal address is
PMB #106-380
4200 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, District of Columbia 20016
United States








  • [permaculture] INFORMATION ALERT: BIRD FLU AND SMALL FARMS, Lawrence F. London, Jr., 03/09/2006

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