WESTON A. PRICE FOUNDATION

INFORMATION ALERT
March 4, 2006

Report says global poultry industry is the root of the bird flu crisis

Source: GRAIN
http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=656358\
09&u=604580
- -----------------------------------------------

Small-scale poultry farming and wild birds are being unfairly blamed for the
bird flu crisis now affecting large parts of the world. A new report from GRAIN
shows how the transnational poultry industry is the root of the problem and must
be the focus of efforts to control the virus. The full briefing, "Fowl play:
The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis," is available at
http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=656358\
09&u=604581. Spanish and French translations will be posted shortly.

The spread of industrial poultry production and trade networks has created ideal
conditions for the emergence and transmission of lethal viruses like the H5N1
strain of bird flu. Once inside densely populated factory farms, viruses can
rapidly become lethal and amplify. Air thick with viral load from infected farms
is carried for kilometers, while integrated trade networks spread the disease
through many carriers: live birds, day-old chicks, meat, feathers, hatching
eggs, eggs, chicken manure and animal feed. Chicken feces and bedding from
poultry factory floors are common ingredients in animal feed.

"Everyone is focused on migratory birds and backyard chickens as the problem,"
says Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN. "But they are not effective vectors of highly
pathogenic bird flu. The virus kills them, but is unlikely to be spread by
them."

For example, in Malaysia, the mortality rate from H5N1 among village chickens is
only 5 per cent, indicating that the virus has a hard time spreading among small
scale chicken flocks. H5N1 outbreaks in Laos, which is surrounded by infected
countries, have only occurred in the nation's few factory farms, which are
supplied by Thai hatcheries. The only cases of bird flu in backyard poultry,
which account for over 90 per cent of Laos' production, occurred next to the
factory farms.

"The evidence we see over and over again, from the Netherlands in 2003 to Japan
in 2004 to Egypt in 2006, is that lethal bird flu breaks out in large scale
industrial chicken farms and then spreads," Kuyek explains.

The Nigerian outbreak earlier this year [2006] began at a single factory farm,
owned by a cabinet minister, distant from hotspots for migratory birds but known
for importing unregulated hatchable eggs. In India, local authorities say that
H5N1 emerged and spread from a factory farm owned by the country's largest
poultry company, Venkateshwara Hatcheries.

A burning question is why governments and international agencies, like the UN
Food and Agriculture Organization, are doing nothing to investigate how the
factory farms and their byproducts, such as animal feed and manure, spread the
virus. Instead, they are using the crisis as an opportunity to further
industrialize the poultry sector. Initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor
poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically-modified
chickens. The web of complicity with an industry engaged in a string of denials
and cover-ups seems complete.

"Farmers are losing their livelihoods, native chickens are being wiped out, and
some experts say that we're on the verge of a human pandemic that could kill
millions of people," Kuyek concludes. "When will governments realize that to
protect poultry and people from bird flu, we need to protect them from the
global poultry industry?"

*****************************************************************

Bill Sanda
Executive Director
Weston A. Price Foundation
bsanda@...