Bird flu: a bonanza for 'Big Chicken'

[nosmokes]

there has already been talk here in the states about having to do away with fre rangingpoultry because of it's possible contamination ffrom wild birds. personally i think any fool csn see that a CAFO is nothing but a ideal breeding ground for an epidemic of bird flu. and what with all of the anti-biotics thatare routinely fed to animals in those conditions who knows what sort of super bug version of the bird flu might possibly emerge from a chicken torture condo? and if that moves into the next human flu then we really are gonna be in deep shit. unintended consequences anat.
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original-grain

Bird flu: a bonanza for 'Big Chicken'

GRAIN





The bird flu crisis rages on. One year ago, when governments were fixated on getting surveillance teams into wetlands and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was waving the finger of blame at Asia and Africa's abundant household poultry, GRAIN and other groups pointed out that large-scale industrial poultry farms and the global poultry trade were spreading bird flu -- not wild birds nor backyard flocks. Today, this has become common knowledge, even though little is being done to control the industrial source of the problem, and governments still shamelessly roll out the wild bird theory to dodge responsibility. Just a few weeks ago, Moscow authorities blamed migratory birds for an outbreak near the city -- in the middle of the Russian winter.

A more sinister dimension of the bird flu crisis, however, is becoming more apparent. Last year, we warned that bird flu was being used to advance the interests of powerful corporations, putting the livelihoods and health of millions of people in jeopardy. Today, more than ever, agribusiness is using the calamity to consolidate its farm-to-factory-to-supermarket food chains as its small-scale competition is criminalised, while pharmaceutical companies mine the goodwill invested in the global database of flu samples to profit from desperate, captive vaccine markets. Two UN agencies -- FAO and the World Health Organisation (WHO) -- remain at the centre of this story, using their international stature, access to governments and control over the flow of donor funds to advance corporate agendas.

Slaughtering the small poultry sector

Authorities in charge of dealing with bird flu are finally acknowledging the role played by the poultry trade in spreading the virus. This is long overdue. The first bird flu outbreaks in Southeast Asia -- Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia -- occurred in closed, intensive factory farms. But thorough investigations were never made into why the disease broke out on those farms and how it subsequently spread from there. The same goes for Turkey and Egypt, where wild birds and backyard flocks were quickly condemned while the poultry companies, which supplied markets and "backyard" producers with birds as the disease raged through the industry, were left off the hook. Even in South Korea, with healthy free-range poultry roaming next toh factory farms hit by the disease, authorities are obsessed with the role of wild birds. It was only in the UK this past February that the myth that large farms are "biosecure" was shattered and the shroud concealing the many ways that bird flu spreads through the transnational poultry industry was torn off. Government officials at first blamed wild birds for the outbreak on a large factory farm owned by poultry giant Bernard Matthews and the company dismissed media reports about a possible link with its operations in Hungary, saying that these were far from the area in that country where bird flu recently broke out. But both explanations fell apart when a government inspector found a wrapper on the company's UK premises proving that meat from a slaughterhouse in Hungary's bird-flu infected area had indeed been processed at the UK factory farm just prior to the outbreak.
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complete article including links to other resources [link:www.grain.org/articles/?id=22|here