When you take tens of millions of chickens and pigs and coop them up in little tiny cages, and you don't give them sunlight, you don't give them a balanced healthy diet, and you don't let them run around in the wild or have fresh air, you create the perfect conditions for the generation and transmission of infectious disease [like Bird Flu].
I don't buy some of the vaguely PETA-like sentiments in the article, but it is surely true that we are keeping millions upon millions of chickens, pigs, and cattle in conditions that, were we dealing with humans, we would immediately condemn as unhygenic and conducive to the spread of infectious disease. Mr. Adams also claims:
In other words, when you take these animals and you pack them together so closely, you accelerate the evolution and development of dangerous influenza. It's almost like having an influenza lab where you're trying to create a biological weapon of some sort. That's how bad it is. You speed the mutation of these viruses by at least a factor of 100. It's almost the perfect laboratory for creating dangerous infectious disease.
Just think of that when the Phlegm hacking bird-flu zombies come banging on your door, looking to eat your freaking brain. Then you'll be sorry. Then you'll be asking yourself: why didn't we go free-range, the ecologically friendly choice?
6 comments:
Except that bird flu originates from countries in which birds are not kept under those conditions ... nice try, Mike, but try again.
Where it origonates is not the point. The point is that the disease takes off and, more importantly, mutates under those conditions.
The reason they don't go free-range is pure economics. It is very expensive to just let these birds run around freely on farms. If the farmers were to do so, the full chicken we buy for $8.00 at Safeway would turn into $20. And as wonderdog said, the flu originates elsewhere. The fact that the conditions we keep our poultry/other birds in accelerates the spread of the disease is null.
If the country of origin of the virus were to regulate their food properly, this wouldn't be a problem.
Of course if we were to keep humans under these kinds of conditions it would be an outrage -- but these aren't humans, they're freaking chickens! Give it up.
PETA < *
I imagine the reason the countries of origon do not regulate their food properly also has somethng to do with "pure economics"
I've heard the 'economics' argument over and over again and I've never heard a good reason why it's wrong to pay more for a better quality product. And as every fan of economics knows, it's the tide that raises all boats. Sure I'm selling my chicken for $20 but you know my name and I'm able to pay people in my community a decent wage to work for me.
Maybe it's crazy to think there's a better way than to export jobs elsewhere so that the profit margin can be boosted for some hotshot in California who's never been on a farm or worn 'Higher State' clothing.
PS Bird flu, swine flu, big deal. Read some older books and you'll see a pattern of menacing diseases that threaten the human race. Why, it's just like the whole global warming/cooling thing!
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