Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching

Image Gallery Healthy chickens with access to fresh air and pasture are less susceptible to disease than their industrially raised counterparts. JASON HOUSTON

Bird flu is caused by a common — and usually harmless — virus found in ducks, but in recent years highly virulent strains have emerged that have caused massive losses of chickens and other domestic birds raised for food.

When an outbreak has occurred, traditionally the virus has been stamped out by quickly destroying all infected and exposed birds. In the United States, 17 million birds were killed in Pennsylvania due to the H5N2 strain of the bird flu virus in 1983 to 1984, and 200 million birds in Eurasia and Africa have been killed due to the H5N1 strain since 2004.

Needless to say, the poultry industry is terrified of bird flu, but not just because of its avian victims: The H5N1 flu strain arising out of Asia also has killed about 200 people. The last time a bird flu virus adapted to humans, it triggered the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people around the globe.

Experts believe that as long as poultry is being raised in stressful, filthy, overcrowded conditions, virulent strains of this virus will continue to arise. The poultry industry is eager both to protect their huge flocks from bird flu outbreaks, and to downplay the connection between the high-risk conditions in their poultry sheds and the propensity these conditions have to facilitate the emergence of deadly strains of the virus.

Laying Blame

Migrating birds have been easy scapegoats. Unfounded claims that wild birds were to blame for the spread of dangerous strains of bird flu were used as a smokescreen to take the focus off industry practices and government policies. But the blanket of protection is being pulled away. A 2006 international science conference, sponsored by the world’s leading veterinary and agricultural authorities, came to the consensus that the main means by which this virus is spreading globally is not via migrating birds, but rather the multibillion dollar commercial trade in poultry products.

For example, Britain has more than 10 million free-ranging chickens, but when the deadly Asian strain of bird flu H5N1 first struck the poultry industry earlier this year, it didn’t hit an outdoor flock — it hit an industrial facility owned by the largest turkey producer in Europe, leaving 160,000 turkeys dead. Likewise, the first outbreaks in Africa and continental Europe occurred in factory farms.

Bird flu is traveling more along the railways and highways than the flyways. Not surprisingly then, when this disease lands, it’s more likely to affect those vertically integrated, globalized and industrialized conglomerate poultry empires rather than small, independent producers serving local markets. During the British outbreak in January 2007, leaked memos showed that the government initially colluded with the industry to cover up that a corporation, Bernard Matthews, was trucking in more than 40 tons of meat from H5N1-stricken Hungary every week. As one biologist remarked, one reason fingers continue to point to wild birds is that “corporations pay more taxes than migratory birds do.”