GRAIN just published a report on the recent bird flu outbreak in India.
In just three weeks after it was officially confirmed, 3.7 million birds had been killed. This comes out to an average of about 122 birds per minute for every minute of the day, day and night, seven days a week over this period. All this is made possible with modern technology like the super efficient AED-100, list price $600,000, which kills 10,000 birds per hour, by picking up the birds by their feet and dragging their heads through electrified water. This included not only birds on a few large factory poultry farms, but birds all over the region including small farm and backyard flocks. It was a devastating blow to the biodiversity of the area.
It seems like we don’t hear much about bird flu these days, but it’s still there and no less important than a few years ago. There are still many people dying each year from bird flu, and the risk is very real that soon there will be person to person transmission of the disease possibly causing a world wide pandemic.
Perhaps the reason we don’t hear much about it anymore is the politicians and large corporate interests profiting from the trade in factory farm birds knew the public wasn’t going to buy their stories anymore about the disease being caused by migratory birds and small flocks kept outdoors.
They knew if they kept telling this story, people would start pointing out that in fact what was happening was outbreaks in factory farms were infecting wild birds, in turn infecting small outdoor flocks. In fact, small outdoor flocks are the solution to the problem, not the cause. The small outdoor poultry holders don’t deserve to be the victims.
The reason there are outbreaks in factory poultry farms is the highly inbreed bird varieties used in these operations have a depressed immune system making them vulnerable to all sorts of infections. It was inevitable a virus like H5N1 bird flu would develop in the unsanitary and crowded conditions of modern factory farms. Bird varieties usually used in small outdoor flocks have normal immune systems.
It’s outrageous that large scale operations which are the source of the problem get massive government subsidies to cover their losses, as what happened with European poultry farmers during the last large outbreak in Europe, while small flock holders all over the world don’t get a penny and face legislation restricting their ability to continue raising birds.
The only option we have is to act as consumers and not buy factory farm poultry or poultry products! The definition of what is or isn’t factory farm is all but totally blurred now. It doesn’t matter if you buy ‘organic’, ‘free range’, ‘grass fed’, ‘grain fed’, ‘pasture raised’ or whatever else they call it. The legal definition of these terms has been so watered down as to not mean anything. It doesn’t matter if you buy these products in a supermarket or whole foods store. Any poultry product you buy will probably be a factory farm product, unless you have a personal knowledge of the farmer or unless you or a friend raised the birds yourself.
In the States the “Buy Local” movement is slowly taking shape. I know that there are some resources on the internet for folks looking to locate local farmers to buy their meat and produce from.
I remember reading something about raising chickens from Hedgewizard who lives in the UK. Just from what he was able to share, it seems that European policies on raising your own can be rather tight. What have you found in your experience to be the best way to obtain good healthy food?
Hi Kelly,
You know in so many ways the Dutch are ready to ‘think outside of the box’. They are very progressive with things like drugs, euthanasia, same sex marriages, environmental issues, you name it. For some reason when it comes to food the only thing they are interested in is if it’s certified organic. Their idea of local is going to the supermarket and buying a bag of potatoes that has ‘Holland’ stamped on it.
We have a neighborhood organic farmers market where we buy a lot of our food. They have meats, cheeses, fruits and veggies. Holland is a small country, and in one sense that makes them ‘local’, but as far as I’m aware none of the farmers at this market are from anywhere near Amsterdam. In addition, AFAIK, none of them give tours or offer any interesting stories about how their food is produced in a natural way. I rarely see ‘real’ farmers running the stands. All of the stands buy and sell from other farms, so you never know for sure where your food comes from. As far as I can see it’s all organic in a certified way, but there is no heart and sole.
The only farmer I know who is a real farmer, someone who I have met him as well as his wife, children, chickens and cows I posted about here:
http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=229
I almost never eat any eggs except his, and his cheese is really nice and I buy kilos of it every time I see him (he lives pretty far away). AFAIK, his cows are only fed grass and his chickens only get plants, bugs, household scraps and spoiled cheese from his cows. He likes old breed animals too, and I’ve seen a number of interesting chickens and cows at his farm.
Most people that live in the neighborhood of this farmer turn their nose up at him. They think he’s a freak, and his cheese tastes funny. They just can’t see a good thing when it’s right in front of them.
This farmer is a friend of mine, a regular reader of this blog and we exchange emails from time to time. He’s having a very hard time financially, and his farm may not survive.
This is the only farmer I know of that makes true organic, handmade, natural food! He told me about one friend of his who has an organic farm, but it’s not really underway yet and I’m not sure it will really ever get started.
This is one of the main reasons I have my own garden, there is just no other way here! Mostly there are too many regulations, and the existing farmers have too much political control.
Friends of mine were in India, in the area affected by bird flu when it hit. Overnight, it seemed, all the edible birds disappeared. We are so lucky in Adelaide, South Australia to have so much beautiful organic food grown on the outskirts of our city and in home gardens. However, governments are doing their best to cover the best land in dense housing full of paving and concrete, smothering the fertile soil that people have spent 200 years using to grow our food. Madness.