Migratory Wild Birds Not Carriers of Avian Influenza

NoNAIS.org ^ | 2006-05-11 | Walter Jeffries

[pubwvj]

The big current excuse for Premises ID and the USDA's proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is that wild birds were going to migrate over the poles, bring Avian Influenza (H5N1) to Alaska and then down the west coast of the United States. The scenerio presented by experts was that then it would come eastward to all the other state and infect our backyard flocks who would then kill off millions of people in the United States.

There are a few problems with this.

1. Chickens are terminal hosts to bird flu. It isn't normally transmissible to humans. Sure, if you suck the blood out of your fighting cock's throat you may get H5N1. If you eat raw ducks blood soup you may get H5N1. If you play soccer with infected chicken heads you may get H5N1. But otherwise the odds of you getting bird flu from a chicken are extremely remote.

• If we are supposed to worry about migratory wild birds carrying bird flu then why isn't the US government warning us about our cats?!? Cats catch birds and eat them. Cats are highly suseptible to H5N1. Cats mutate the virus in their mammal bodies. Cats then return to their human families, lick them, scratch them, breath on them, cough on them, etc. This transmits the mutated form of High Pathenogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) virus to humans who can then run around spreading it to each other. Pussy is more dangerous than chicks. But for some reason this isn't what the government is focusing on. It makes you wonder if all this fear of the Bird Flu has anything to do with science.
• The migratory birds aren't carrying bird flu according to a recent report. Oops. So the excuse of wild migratory birds bringing bird flu to our chickens is like a screen door on a submarine - full of holes and not that useful.
• The path of transmission of H5N1 from country to country appears to have more to do with the smuggling of exotic birds and trafficing in poultry products from factory farms according to this GRAIN article.

  This sounds rather like the Y2K scare. Sure, it is a very good idea to have your pantry stocked up and be always ready for a disaster, after all, an ice storm, hurricane, flood or earthquake could come. But, we don't need to be all in a panic. We don't need to be wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on Premises ID and NAIS. We don't need to be scare mongering the public like with ABC's Bird Flu drama. We don't need to be vilifying farmers and backyard chickens as "walking pandemics" in the words of Vermont's Agriculture Secretary Steve Kerr.

  Curbs in the international transport of chicken parts, poultry and manures from factory farms are what our government should be looking at if they want to solve the bird flu "crisis". Factory farms use mono-genetic flocks in concentrated, crowded, confinement conditions that are the ideal breeding grounds for new and dangerous mutations of H5N1. Backyard poultry are genetically diverse and geographically dispersed. Grandma's egg hen is not a threat to society. The real threat is Big Agri-Corps that spread disease, decimate local economies, pollute our environment, breed new strains of disease and waste petrolium with their intensive protien factories and long supply lines.

  It is time the government sat back and took a break from all this science fiction. I enjoy a good novel as much as anybody but the government's reaction is getting absurd. NAIS need to all be dumped for the boondoggle they were. Lets stop pouring money, time and efford down this blackhole. Time to get back to traditional farming.

[Jaysun]

The real threat is Big Agri-Corps that spread disease, decimate local economies, pollute our environment, breed new strains of disease and waste petrolium with their intensive protien factories and long supply lines.

This is a bunch of socialist bullsh*t and it sums up the author's motivation nicely.

[cripplecreek]

I remember that scientists were surprised when the virus didn't show up with migratory birds in a couple of places they were sure it would arrive.