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Stephanie Strom writes in the NYT that deadly avian flu viruses have affected more than 33 million turkeys, chickens and ducks since December and while farmers in Asia and elsewhere have had to grapple with avian flu epidemics, farmers in the United States have never confronted a health crisis among livestock like this one. Almost every day brings confirmation by the Agriculture Department that at least another hundred thousand or so birds must be destroyed; some days, the number exceeds several million.
Mounds and mounds of carcasses have piled up in vast barns in the northwestern corner of Iowa, where farmers and officials have been appealing for help to deal with disposal of such a vast number of flocks. Workers wearing masks and protective gear have scrambled to clear the barns, but it is a painstaking process. In these close-knit towns that include many descendants of the area’s original Dutch settlers, some farmers have resorted to burying dead birds in hurriedly dug trenches on their own land, while officials weighed using landfills and mobile incinerators. Federal lawmakers from Iowa called on the Agriculture Department to do more to help farmers with the culling and disposal of birds. The federal agency has made tens of millions of dollars available for assistance, and noted that it is deploying hundreds of staff members, including 85 in Iowa.
Iowa, where one in every five eggs consumed in the country is laid, has been the hardest hit: More than 40 percent of its egg-laying hens are dead or dying. Many are in this region, where barns house up to half a million birds in cages stacked to the rafters. The high density of these egg farms helps to explain why the flu, which can kill 90 percent or more of a flock within 48 hours, is decimating more birds in Iowa than in other states. “It’s important that we get that done fairly soon and we need landfills to be reasonable in terms of the charges they’re assessing and willing to take these birds,” says US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “But at some point in time we’ve basically got to get rid of these birds because otherwise we’re going to begin to have some other issues in terms of odor and flies and things of that nature that people are obviously not going to want to deal with.”
(Score: 1, Disagree) by albert on Sunday May 17 2015, @02:38AM
I really don't care if conditions make the chickens look miserable. They are chickens. If live plucking or cooking makes them taste better or reduces costs, go for it.
Biosafety is another matter. All of us are affected, even those who don't eat chicken. There should be no need to vaccinate a chicken. There should be no need to give antibiotics to a chicken. These aren't people with the right to roam about, traveling in crowded buses and visiting church. They are chickens. They are supposed to stay inside, quarantined from every other farm and from wildlife. Contact with humans should be minimized and, in our robotic future, ideally eliminated.
These farmers failed. We shouldn't help them. We should punish them for putting all of us at risk. Disease doesn't spread without stupidity, laziness, or malice.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:10AM
You sound like someone who skins dogs alive or uses blowtorches on them because it makes the meat "better tasting." Sadly this still happens in east Asia.
There is an ethical requirement to minimize the suffering of other creatures, even if they are going to end up on our plates.
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(Score: 1, Offtopic) by albert on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:01AM
I see you don't appreciate cultural diversity. There is no such ethical requirement except in your own mind, and certainly not in East Asia.
Here is where your "ethical requirement" comes from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_in_Nazi_Germany [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler_and_vegetarianism [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:17AM
Jesus Christ, Hitler was right AGAIN
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @05:17PM
Hitler liked puppies. Therefore, puppies are bad!
I see you don't appreciate cultural diversity.
Morality doesn't end at the border. Contrary to popular belief, it's perfectly possible to believe that those who intentionally inflict needless suffering on living beings are immoral no matter where they live. If a culture promotes that, then the culture is backwards.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @05:44PM
Not sure if ad hominem or red herring, but obvious sophistry. "Hitler liked it/did x" does not make x a bad thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @05:12PM
ethical requirement
What does that mean and how far do you go? How much suffering is alright to inflict? Is it ethical to kill and eat animals just because they taste better than vegetables?
(Score: 1) by ThG on Sunday May 17 2015, @08:30AM
They are living creatures just like you and me. People like you should be put in those cages, not those animals.
People like you are the reason why this planet is dying. Go fuck yourself.