Flu Year's Eve? |
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January 12, 2007
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HSUS
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As we ring in the new year, the deadly Asian mutant strain of avian influenza, H5N1, continues to spread, killing both birds and, increasingly, people. The number of human deaths from bird flu in 2006 exceeded the prior three years combined. Still, while millions of birds have died or been killed, only a few hundred people have become ill. Solace can't be gotten by that low—yet tragic—number. Given that the virus is killing over half of the people it infects, if a flu strain like H5N1 were to mutate into a form easily transmitted from one person to the next, we could be facing a catastrophic pandemic of influenza that could kill millions of people.
The current dialogue surrounding avian influenza speaks of a potential H5N1 pandemic as if it were a natural phenomenon, such as a hurricane or an earthquake. The reality, though, is that the next pandemic may be more of an unnatural disaster—a disaster of our own making. Leading scientists point to the industrialization of the global poultry industry to explain the unprecedented recent emergence and spread of numerous strains of highly pathogenic avian influenza, including hypervirulent, so-called "predator-type" strain H5N1.
Bird flu viruses have existed harmlessly for millions of years, but placed into extreme conditions, some of these viruses can mutate into dangerous—even deadly—forms. In the trenches of WWI, millions of soldiers were crowded together in stressful, unhygienic conditions. This may have played a role in converting a bird flu virus into the cause of the deadliest outbreak in human history, the pandemic of 1918 that killed 50 million people. From the point of view of the virus, these same trench warfare conditions exist today in industrial chicken shed and egg factory farm operations, where birds are overcrowded and stressed by the billions.
The United Nations has urged that "[g]overnments, local authorities and international agencies need to take a greatly increased role in combating the role of factory-farming," which combined with live bird markets, they say, "provide ideal conditions for the virus to spread and mutate into a more dangerous form." If the industrial poultry industry doesn't reverse course away from greater intensification, they may bear some responsibility for humanity's next killer plague.
Related Links
If Avian Influenza Arrives in the United States: Advice for Protecting Yourself and Your Pets from Wild Birds with H5N1
Additional Avian Influenza Resources
