So in "general" , since all you see on the news/internet now is all the chickens, ducks etc being culled or KILLED so that they can burn them etc, why are places like China, having chicken and duck places sponsor their meat to get rid of it? Why would one eat it now out of any other time?

Is it safe to assume that MORE animals are being killed now so that they can get new/young chickens, ducks, geese raised as fresh livestock? Or more animals are technically being spared because there are "empty" farms as we speak?

All the "farmed" animals were going to die anyway, i hate that, and i hate the ways in which they just kill the animals "just in case" they might have a disease etc. Since some farms there are sort of out of business momentarilly, will this decrease meat sales in poultry or increase them for demand once the scare goes away?:-/

anyone have any opinions here?

I'm assuming things will return to "normal" once the flu scare is over, which could be years. Meanwhile many poultry farmers will go out of business, which is bad for the farmers, of course.

This is the media's new buzz word. They have tried to start the same panic with Lyme disease, Hanta, and West Nile.

In three years in a grossly overpopulated continent where people have fowl living in their homes with them, there has been 160 cases and 80 deaths.

More people die from the common cold every year that this "Pandemic" has killed in 3 years.

anyone have any opinions here?

OFF TOPIC

I could if I could get past looking at your avatar.:p

This is the media's new buzz word. They have tried to start the same panic with Lyme disease, Hanta, and West Nile.

In three years in a grossly overpopulated continent where people have fowl living in their homes with them, there has been 160 cases and 80 deaths.

More people die from the common cold every year that this "Pandemic" has killed in 3 years.


I somewhat agree. Right now there's not much risk to us. We're all much more likely to die of something else. However, the CDC and WHO seem concerned. They aren't "the media."

"How serious is the current pandemic risk?

The risk of pandemic influenza is serious. With the H5N1 virus now firmly entrenched in large parts of Asia, the risk that more human cases will occur will persist. Each additional human case gives the virus an opportunity to improve its transmissibility in humans, and thus develop into a pandemic strain. The recent spread of the virus to poultry and wild birds in new areas further broadens opportunities for human cases to occur. While neither the timing nor the severity of the next pandemic can be predicted, the probability that a pandemic will occur has increased."

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/avian_faqs/en/index.html


The main risk is to the poultry industry.

One thing is for sure is that we are long overdue for a pandemic. I have a wonderful book on the History of Disease - reads like a suspense novel only it's true - and there is no way we can avoid one.

As to the original question, I think in the long run this will make no difference whatsoever. As with the Mad Cow Disease, it caused some upset in the beginning, but everything got back to "normal" again. Some farmers suffered, maybe some went out of business, but the gap was quickly filled.

In the poorer countries, chickens are sometimes the only things they have to eat... they're not going to stop "producing" them (yuk!!!!!) just because of bird-flu.

I somewhat agree. Right now there's not much risk to us. We're all much more likely to die of something else. However, the CDC and WHO seem concerned. They aren't "the media."



The CDC and WHO's jobs are to develop contigency plans for the worst case scinario.

They do not make predictions, the go with the absolute worst case available to them.

They seem to be evaluating risk.