Who to blame for bird flu’s spread? Real problem is factory farming
As avian influenza spreads through overcrowded factory farms and millions of birds are culled in response, everything from wild birds to undercover investigators has been blamed for the prevalence of this deadly avian disease. Blaming those without power — those with no control over the conditions that allow this deadly pathogen to proliferate — is an effort to distract consumers from the real problem: factory farming.
Since February 2022, over 100 million farmed birds have been killed or died due to bird flu outbreaks in North America. Even one case of bird flu forces the culling of an entire poultry flock; sometimes, due to the scale of industrial operations, more than 1 million birds are killed on a single farm.
This industrial-scale killing is a stark contrast to chickens being reported as a popular pet. Right now, 85 million chickens are living in homes across the country. Yet, as birds continue to be infected, cruel methods like ventilation shutdown — in which animals slowly die of heatstroke — are used to cull poultry flocks en masse.
Meanwhile, migrating wild birds have been blamed for spreading bird flu to poultry flocks, with little evidence presented. More recently, California’s Department of Food and Agriculture opened an investigation into whether animal activists documenting cruelty may have introduced the disease to Sonoma County duck and chicken farms.
In both cases, the less powerful are blamed, while multibillion-dollar corporations are allowed to jeopardize animal and human health, and the government protects the industry’s bottom line with assurances that eggs and milk are safe to consume. Wild birds and animal activists are not the only victims of efforts to demonize anyone animal agriculture sees as a threat. Take, for example, the abuse of a gray wolf killed this year in Wyoming, where ranchers are legally permitted to shoot the animals after they were removed from the federal Endangered Species Act seven years ago.
Bullies scapegoat others instead of taking responsibility for their misdeeds, and there is no bigger bully than the factory farming industry. Overcrowding cows, pigs, chickens and other animals in filthy, stressful conditions while giving them enormous quantities of drugs and feeding them feces and dead animals creates a fertile ground for disease.
Pigs are considered particularly liable to spread disease to humans because their bodies are capable of being infected by viruses from people and birds — creating a petri dish for mutations and viral spread between species that would otherwise be incapable of infecting one another. Yet there is no sign of changes to how pigs are being monitored for disease on U.S. farms.
Animal advocates and concerned citizens who have challenged irresponsible farming practices have faced retaliation. When two sick and dying piglets were rescued from a Smithfield factory in Utah and brought to a sanctuary, agribusiness enlisted the Utah attorney general, law enforcement and even the FBI to pursue felony charges. This overreaction to removing animals considered “property” with no economic value reveals a lot about efforts to target activists. The matter went to a jury trial, and appropriately, the animal rescuers were found not guilty.
Agribusiness wages sophisticated communications efforts, often in conjunction with legal efforts, to bolster its position and weaken its critics. In addition to food “disparagement” libel laws and “right to farm” laws, the industry has introduced “ag-gag” laws across the U.S. to prevent its abuses from being exposed. These laws imperil free speech, transparency and accountability. In some states, “ag-gag” laws have been challenged in court and ruled unconstitutional. At the federal level, Big Ag was able to enact the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act after 9/11, opportunistically and inappropriately associating efforts to prevent animal cruelty with murderous terrorism. Animal advocates oppose violence, so this ill-advised law is largely irrelevant, but it allows animal exploiting industries to label and demonize their opponents unfairly.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we must do more to prevent the next global health crisis rather than endlessly searching for someone to blame without cause. “Pandemic fatigue” has left many of us ambivalent and worn out, as Kelsey
Piper reported for Vox Future Perfect. This feeling is understandable, but it is also being used to distract the public.
Bird flu has now been detected in more than 34 U.S. dairy herds, and fragments of the virus have been found in pasteurized milk sampled from grocery stores. This influenza may pose little risk of human-to-human transmission today, but scientists caution that viruses can mutate — and that bird flu’s novel jump to cattle signifies that the danger may grow with time.
While blame is shifted, we are failing to recognize the dangers that birds and industry workers face — and what some experts warn is a growing pandemic threat.
Industrial animal agriculture needs to be reformed and held accountable. Until that happens, we consumers can vote with our dollars and avoid buying animal products from factory farms.