The Truth About the Animal ID Plan
(Page 5 of 7)
June/July 2007
By Jack Kittredge
It’s bad for medical care. Because of the crowded and stressful conditions in which confined animals are raised, they are routinely fed antibiotics to promote growth and prevent disease. In the United States, 70 percent of all antibiotics are used as feed additives for livestock. This practice, however, leads to the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria. When these bacteria spread to humans, the antibiotics are ineffective in medical treatment. Both the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization have called for an end to routine feeding of antibiotics.
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It promotes virulent diseases. Large-scale confinement poultry operations have recently been associated with outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian flu. Bird flu has been endemic to poultry for centuries, but only in the past 10 years has the H5 strain mutated into this particular variant that is highly fatal to humans. The ability of a virus to mutate into such a deadly strain is greatly enhanced by the conditions in factory farms.
In a backyard flock of birds, two things tend to prevent such a mutation. First, genetic diversity among the birds increases the chance that some birds will have an immune response that will eliminate the virus. Second, the more pathogenic a virus, the less likely it is to replicate. To reproduce, a virus must take over the cellular machinery of its host, insert its own DNA instructions, and make the hijacked cells churn out copies of the virus and expel them to infect other hosts via such responses as coughing, sneezing and diarrhea. A virus that kills its host cannot trigger these responses and cannot easily spread. Thus the two tendencies — of hosts to develop resistance and of diseases to sicken but not kill — serve to moderate disease attacks in a natural setting.
But giant poultry houses are not natural settings. There, the birds are usually all of one specific variety, selected for rapid growth and maximum production at the expense of genetic diversity. Also, the artificial environment allows a virus to kill one bird and still spread to another. Packing in birds at densities of two per square foot means the virus must travel only a small distance. Infected manure remains on the cement floor rather than being degraded by soil organisms. There is no sunlight to disinfect, and only poor ventilation to refresh the air. Also, the stress of these conditions weakens disease resistance in the birds.
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