When Will They Learn?

Creating new crises with agriculture.

A few days ago I read an article in Nature magazine expressing concern that bird flu has been detected in cattle, specifically dairy cattle, in at least 6 states in the US. It mentioned that it is puzzling scientists just how cattle would contract bird flu presumably from birds and then pass it on to a worker at the farm. We have been through bird flu here in Giza in 2006 when the military came and confiscated all of the poultry raised at home by the farming families. The families NEEDED that poultry to provide protein and disposable income for needs that had to be purchased. The fear in 2006 was that bird flu was transmitted in the air and that it would infect all the people. What was discovered in the following years was that it wasn’t that easy for humans to get bird flu from poultry. If a chicken or duck got sick, it was fine to cook it and eat it. No danger. There were a few cases of human bird flu that were all traced to a close access to the manure from birds that had dried and then been inhaled or consumed by the farmers or their families, often when baby chicks were housed under a bed to keep them warm in winter.

It isn’t that easy to get bird flu, and it isn’t, for the most part, transmitted by migratory birds. There are massive industrial hatcheries all over the world that crank out baby chicks who have no need of food or water for 48 hours. During this period they can be, and ARE, shipped by air all over the world. During this period, it is virtually impossible to know if they are healthy or sick, since the primary marker of illness is not eating or drinking. That is where bird flu came from and how it has spread all over the world. If the virus was being transferred by migratory birds to Egypt coming from the east in 2006, it would have arrived in the autumn around October with the migrations from Asia and eastern Europe. Instead it arrived abruptly in early winter, about February, when there are no migrations from the east. Bird flu is an industrial disease that no one wants to discuss logically.

Now we have an issue with cattle being diagnosed with Avian Influenza/Bird Flu in the US. What is the connection? The last time this question was asked was in relationship to mad cow disease, a prion disease in cattle that was found to spread to human beings through consumption of meat and organs from infected cattle. It was found that this disease had been passed to cattle through the practice of feeding meat supplements to cattle, and the meat supplements came from sheep that had been infected with scrapie, a neurological disorder in sheep, which were then used to make this protein meal for beef cattle. There is a similar disease that has been expanding in wildlife, chronic wasting disease, which is found in free ranging deer. So the transfer of disease from one animal to another is not unheard of. The connection in these cases is the feeding of herbivores inappropriate substances in order to achieve weight gains, the inappropriate substances in the case of the deer and the mad cow outbreak, being animal protein. However, for a number of years, even before the outbreak of bird flu the practice of feeding cattle with poultry manure has been relatively common and in fact recommended in the US.

It would seem that industrial agriculture never learns.