Bird Flu outbreak in western Canada

[Catherine]

I have been hearing word of a bird flu outbreak for awhile now. Things have turned very serious. It is a highly dangerous strain and of course there is a massive bird cull going on.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-co...-1.2863178

This is a disaster and the birds are paying with their lives. Does anyone doubt that the conditions the birds are raised in is a contributing factor. Of course it spreads. Look how the birds are housed. Of course the birds can't fight it off, they are in such poor health.

This is yet another example of how factory style farming is not a good thing. Before this is over, who knows how many birds will have died.

[Tobi]

The same has happened here, in Yorkshire UK recently.
I agree. The conditions these birds are made to live in can only lower their natural defences. As usual, the Humans only listen when it affects business, or profits. But maybe humans will learn to join the dots one of these days....(?) or not, as the case may be. Humans are supposed to be 'the most intelligent species' on Earth......
Yeah well.....
If only the birds could talk -hey? They will have joined the dots decades ago.

[LPC]

Oh dear, here we go again....You are so right about businesses only taking things seriously when their profits are hit. If compassion had taken priority and the poor creatures had not been crammed into tiny cages together, this terrible infection would not have taken such a hold. The poor birds have low resistance to disease because of the way they are intensively farmed. Also, being so crammed together helps the infection to spread rapidly. Industrial scale exports also spread the problem to other countries. Finally, previous reliance by the intensive poultry farms on antibiotics to keep infections at bay has resulted in antibiotic resistance on a large scale, making the risk greater year by year.

All one can do is hope that the intensive farmers will realise the errors of their ways. Petitions on the issue help, too. Ideally the intensive farms should come to realise that having happy, healthy birds in a non-intensive environment will limit infections. But if having their profits take a big plunge causes them to change their ways, any reduction in the cruelty would be for the better.

(12-10-2014, 02:41 AM)Tobi Wrote: Humans are supposed to be 'the most intelligent species' on Earth......

Yes, Tobi, I heartily agree - with the stress on "supposed to be"! I often wonder if we are really as clever as some of us think we are. Some of our actions are actually incredibly ignorant of how nature works.

[Catherine]

My post just disappeared and now I have to do it again.

Quote:Humans are supposed to be 'the most intelligent species' on Earth......
Yeah well.....

Every species I encounter, I am struck by how much more intelligent they are than we previously thought. Humans not so much.

Human encounters leave me wondering how we have managed to survive as a species. I am constantly amazed at how dumb we are. Present company not included in this observation

As you say we are not connecting the dots. We cram huge numbers of birds in unhygienic conditions and then we wonder why the epidemic spreads so fast. I wonder why it has spread so slow.

Sadly many birds will be killed, but these birds were living horrible lives and just this once they will be killed humanely.
The more sad thing will be if the farmers rebuilt things the way they were.

They are supposed to get government compensation. Good luck with that. We know how quickly governments operate.

In the mean time all of lower mainland B.C. is under restrictions. That is a huge farming area.