Bangladesh Slaughters 150,000 Birds After Worst H5N1 Virus Outbreak In 5 Years 76
An anonymous reader writes in with news about a bird flu outbreak in Bangladesh. "At least 150,000 chickens and 300,000 eggs have been destroyed at a giant poultry farm near Dhaka in Bangladesh after the major outbreak of avian flu was detected last week, officials said Wednesday. This season's bird flu outbreak was the worst in five years. Officials at Bay Agro at Gazipur detected the deadly H5N1 flu strain 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Dhaka on Monday after dozens of birds died, which had prompted the poultry company to send samples to a laboratory for testing. 'There are about 150,000 chickens at the farm. We have already killed and destroyed 120,000 chickens and we will kill the rest today,' livestock department director Mosaddeq Hossain said, according to AFP. Hossain said that it was the worst avian flu outbreak in five years."
Poultrycaust (Score:2)
Now the chickens are going to want their own little country, I suppose?
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I am a chicken, you insensitive clod! No offense, I just woke up on the wrong side of the road. *bluck*
But I showed the armadillos that it could be done.
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Wonder how? (Score:1)
A friend of mine owns a small chicken farm (dozens of chickens), and had to shoot all of his when they caught the bird flu. How do you kill and dispose of millions of pounds of chicken?
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With a chicken gun [wikipedia.org] of course.
Demo here [youtube.com].
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They are being gassed. Atleast that is how we kill vast swaths of animals here(The Netherlands). CO2 is quite effective.
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Re:Wonder how? (Score:4, Funny)
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And the rooms were already built and tested.
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They where teaching the birds to speak Bengali? I'm not sure how you would teach Aryan languages to chickens, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to try.
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It was the other way around.
The companies that built the ovens for Auschwitz and the other concentration camps originally built crematoria ovens for disposing of livestock carcasses. When the Nazis needed to dispose off large numbers of bodies from the concentration camps they initially burned them on pyres, but eventually they contracted the company A.J. Topf & Sohne which had experience with building crematoria ovens for livestock carcasses.
This was fairly typical for the holocaust. German companies p
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The normal method (here where I live) is to either gas them or use a high-speed shredder/pulveriser/thing - you chuck those chickens in and they're turned to paste before they can say "cheep".
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You can always hurd them into airport runways.
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How do you kill and dispose of millions of pounds of chicken?
You organize a large-scale, last-man-standing cockfight. The difficulty is convincing the hens that they are roosters, but chicks tend to be open about gender issues these days.
If the chickens are cannibals, they take care of the disposal part themselves. Winner eats all.
Re:dispose of millions of pounds of chicken? (Score:2)
Play real life Angry Birds?
Anybody surprised? Don't be (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly, this same thing goes on with farmed fish/shrimp throughout Asia, which is leading to some new bugs that will be arriving on these to the west.
Now, why should the west be concerned? Because all too often, weastern companies, such as safeway, ignore safety issues. Safeway will actually use chicken from Asia. Likewise, they get a lot of farmed fish/shellfish from Asia/South America.
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1. Increase density of animal cruelty
2. Profit
3. Contaminate the whole human population with a new unbeatable strain of flu
4. ???
5. Profit from all the cleanup that will be required
Business as usual while ignorant people let the money system dictate our destiny.
Captcha: pastures
there will be a sudden uprise in weddings... (Score:4, Insightful)
I know you are going WTF? at my header but read on...
Some years ago there was a large scale out break of Bird Flu in my country. Naturally the government called for a massive cull...
And while most (all normal people?) avoided all chicken and eggs, *some* people decided to take advantage of the sudden plummet in chicken prices.
I shit you not, when I heard that a family in the neighbourhood sped up their son's wedding date significantly to take advantage of all that cheap, cheap chicken...
Oh sure, apparently if you cook the chicken thoroughly the chances of catching the virus a minimum, but still... we decide to give that invitation a pass...
So my dear Bangladeshi friends, take it from a fellow South Asian: If you get a sudden invite to a party or wedding, give it a pass...
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Aww shucks, thanks! You are just too generous with your compliments!
I am sure you are just the same, if not more so, my good sir/madam :D
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What is wrong with you, and why are you here?
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Only because there is a demand for it
How many times do you see people buying the most worthless And cheapest food only to put it into their $40,000 SUV
Priorities
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Exactly! like the neighbours I mention, they were *definitely* not poor, they were upper middle class, they could afford the same number of chicken even at normal prices, then why would they risk a wedding like that?
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how much would they really save? And why? just to serve over cooked chicken? And wouldn't there be a cost in just moving a wedding date so suddenly?
Wouldn't that be considered rude?
Re:there will be a sudden uprise in weddings... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, that's not the point, the point is, I heard *a lot* of people say that such events were on the up rise, I ignored them as typical gossip... until I got that wedding card.
Asking them why the sudden change in date, (the engagement had happened only a month or so ago, and the wedding wasn't due for another six months or so...) I was *floored* by them being totally honest and describing *this* as a reason!
Then I started wondering, if one gossip is true, then how many more?
Then I start hearing about some *other* people getting married early... and my mind started spinning.
We pretty much stayed away from weddings for quite a while...
Hence my advice to others; If you start hearing gossip about early weddings, STAY THE HELL AWAY.
I mean, why the fuck would you risk a wedding turning into a tragedy simply because of rock-bottom prices of chicken? I still wonder what possessed my neighbours, I mean it was not like they were poor or anything! The father of the groom worked in the Gulf and earned a boatload of money...
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I though the point was that you don't like cheap chicken and parties.
supposing your government disposed of the infected chicken stock whats so bad about it? were there any people infected from the cheap chicken that had a stigma on it? stigma created by people like you - was the chicken they used even domestic? because the way such stigma on a foodstuff works is that it has little to do with the origin of the chicken even.
(anyhow, isn't it live avian that spread it?)
Re:there will be a sudden uprise in weddings... (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, just to clarify, this is south asia we are talking about, not europe or us or other place with strict slaughter control. We have already have trouble catching meat that came from bloated animals (they pump water in the arteries to fatten up the meat...) and meat that comes from already deceased carcasses. Things are bad, here.
So let's revisit the issue. Govt orders a cull. Typically, that means it won't do it itself, just orders one to be conducted by the stock owners. People naturally get afraid, demand drops, chicken prices hit rock bottom.
Cue crazy people taking advantage of falling chicken prices to organise massive weddings. No body knows where the chicken is coming from, is it from the affected stock, is it safe blah blah.
Please don't presume, I have nothing against cheap chicken and weddings. But I know my country, I know just how *diligently* they work. If all the infected chicken had been disposed off in a proper way, then it wouldn't have mattered, because that would have ensured the other chicken was safe, it's only the stigma keeping the prices low. But given our less than amicable control system, you can't be sure of that here.
If people can cheat by bloating and dead-carcassing, you think they wouldn't stoop to a bit of bribery to ensure *their* stock is passed without checks?
No risk in the meat (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh sure, apparently if you cook the chicken thoroughly the chances of catching the virus a minimum, but still..
Influenza is a virus. It's a thing which spread from one living being to another. It has nothing to do with your food. *You* could eat sicked chicken without any risk as long as it's dead and cooked (and you have to cook poultry thoroughly if you don't want to have a big food poisoning problems anyway).
Also, birdflu is a *BIRD* disease, humans normally don't catch it under normal circumstances. (The 'H5' receptor on the virus only binds to chicken cells. You need H1 or H3 to bind to human cells easily if my memory serves me right) So even if you have a sick chicken in your house, chance are almost nothing would probably happen to you.
The problem is not *you*. The problem with is with the high density of birds in those farms and their massive (over-)population.
If one single chicken catches the bird flu, it can spread very quickly to the whole farm, then neighbouring farm, then the whole region (same as human flu at a workplace in a densely populated area).
If you don't stop the disease today, by killing the 150'000 chicken who were in direct contact with a sick chicken (and could catch it) today, then in a few days, you'll have a dozen of million of sick birds on your hands and a massive epidemiological problem. (Same with humans: If you don't stay at home when you're sick, you're going to make all your colleagues sick and before you know, the whole building housing your workplace is full of cick people).
In addition to that, if there's such a massive amount of virus spreading around, there's a tiny bit of risk that "by error" a virus infects a human who is a lot in contact with the chickens and the bird epidemic (and by "a lot" i really mean "a lot". As in "the farmer who work in the chicken farm everyday". Not as in "some random guy who happen to eat chicken").
For the human him-/her-self this isn't necessarily bad news (in a big city, in theory... sadly we're usually speaking about very poor farmers in remote area, so their accessibility to proper treatment is very likely to be sub-optimal). Nor is it a direct danger for other humans around (it was already a big amount of luck that the *bird* virus managed to infect a human. Jumping from that point onward to another human *again* is like winning a lottery 2 times in a row: *very* unlikely).
But due to the peculiarities of influenza genetics, inside the human the bird flu virus could get mixed with a human flu it the human has it too. (The bird flu stealing the gene for the correct receptor to be able to efficiently bind and infect human cells). The same could also happen inside an animal which could catch both flu at the same time (pigs can occasionally catch bird flu, and pigs can also catch human flu - this a pig could also serve this role of mixer).
And *this* mutant hybrid would be problematic because this new humanized bird flu could cause an epidemic among the human population.
In short, the sick chickens aren't dangerous for humans. They are not killed because of that. The reason they are killed is to stop the bird flu spreading and causing an epidemics among the birds. And also to lower the risk that 1 virus manage to win the lottery and become a human-infecting hybrid and in turn cause a human epidemic.
But the flesh is perfectly edible. You can safely eat chicken, and you can safely take advantage of the lower prices.
(It's a different situation than the mad cow disease.
Mad cow disease is due to a protein, which survives cooking.
Bird flu is due to a virus, which requires a living bird, and doesn't infect humans anyway).
Biology 101 (Score:5, Informative)
There is signifcant risk. You can get sick from eating it.
NO. YOU. CAN'T.
First and fore most:
- Influenza is a virus.
- It doesn't have a biochemistry of its own, it must use its host's. outside of a cell it's just an inert object.
- It is produced by one infected cell in the sick individual. And needs to reach a fresh cell within its (short) life time.
(its a virus containing RNA, and not encapsulated in a protein shell but in a lipid membrance. This means it won't survive long without a host cell whose biochemistry to use).
In short: that means that it must be quickly sneezed onto someone else (aerosol and particulate transmission). IT CANNOT STAY LURKING FOR A LONG TIME OUTSIDE IT'S PREVIOUS HOST UNTIL IT MEETS A NEW ONE.
This a *virus* (and a fragile one). Not a *bacteria*, not a *bacteria's spore*. Not a parasite. Nor one of the few more durable viruses wich might, under the right condition, resist a longer time until finding a new host (HIV viruses hidden inside the needle of a used syringe can survive a few hours before finding a new host)
- That means you need a living host, with living cell secreting viruses to transmit it.
- A fried émicé in a nice curry sauce sevred along a side dish of rice *DEFINITELY FAILS* the "living cell" definition.
Also, if you're cooking impaired:
- poultry meat is ALWAYS served thoroughly cooked. chicken are rather filthy animals and if you don't cook their meat, you're at high risk of food poisoning due to parasites, bacteria, and other stuff. Influenza is the least of your problems. YOU CAN'T EAT CHICKEN RAW.
- cooking destroys and sterilise almost anything (the only exception are prions. prions could somewhat survive some amount of cooking and still be able to replicate afterward. mad cow disease CAN BE transmitted by cooked food, but that's an exception)
- viruses will be *COMPLETELY DESTROYED* during the cooking (along with all the other bad stuff. this make the food safe and edible. cooking was invented exactly for this purpose) the only usual risks that remain after cooking are non infectious but chemical (pollution, toxins, poison).
Last but not least:
- Avian flu (H5N1) is *A. BIRD. DISEASE*.
- It's got a Haemagglutinin 5 (H5) on its surface - that's were it's codename comes from.
- H5 binds to bird cell. It can easily infect birds.
- H1, H2 and H3 are the one binding to human cells. You would need on of these to infect humans.
- It can only *very very very rarely* enter a human host, only by sheer luck, almost *by error*. We're speaking about a few dozens of individuals each year during avian flu outbreaks, and this is mostly the poeple who are exposed to birds a lot (the farmers handling them working in the overcrowded farms with thousand of chicken cramed in a small place. not the guy eating a chicken wing).
So even if the virus was magically able to survive a long time outside a living host (it doesn't) AND even if the virus was able to magically survive cooking (it doesn't neither) chance for catching avian flu through eating are close to none.
On the other hand, if you're a poor farmer working daily on a farm with thousands of chickens packed together and if an avian flu epidemic spreads among your flock, there's a small chance for you to catch it to. (And sadly for you, because you're a poor farmer in the backland and not a wealthy citizen in the big city, you will let the disease evolve without treatment, hoping that it will end on its own, and you might have a complication, like a pneumonia).
In short:
- You can catch bird flu, if you're a living bird and another living bird sneeze on you.
(Among birds, the oro-fecal pathway works too. Don't peck neither on other birds' fresh shit)
- You can catch bird flu, if you're a (living) human and you got sneezed on by sick birds several thousand times a day in the tiny overcrowded farm where you work and you are not lucky.
If you're already sick and *really not lucky a
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But handling raw chicken with the virus can cause it to spread. So mutation can happen from preparing infected chicken.
". IT CANNOT STAY LURKING FOR A LONG TIME OUTSIDE IT'S PREVIOUS HOST UNTIL IT MEETS A NEW ONE."
If you are going to be presenting your self as knowledgeable on the subject, then you need to refrain from saying 'long time' it's vague.
It can last for days, depending on many factors. The number one way ti's transmitted bird to bird is through shared drinking water.
Eating properly prepare chicke
Time scale (Score:2)
If you are going to be presenting your self as knowledgeable on the subject, then you need to refrain from saying 'long time' it's vague.
Under regular conditions, its in the range of minutes, maybe up to hours.
RNA isn't that stable. (In labs, it needs to be handled specially. You need to either freeze it a deep temperatures (you put your RNA samples in the -80C freezer) or copy/convert it to DNA (use a reverse-transcriptase to make much more stable DNA out of it).
The number one way ti's transmitted bird to bird is through shared drinking water.
...as in one birds poops into the water while another is drinking (= oro-fecal pathway I mentioned 2 levels higher in the thread). Not as in 2 birds which happen to drink from the s
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Then why did 6 people die already from it? I thought you said humans can't get the virus?
Are you a doctor or biologists as you sure think you are one.
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Deaths (Score:2)
Then why did 6 people die already from it? I thought you said humans can't get the virus?
Yup, a dozen of people caught the disease, out of whom 6 died.
Now to put things into perspective, according to WHO [who.int], each season, regular human flu infection gets *half a dozen millions* of individuals out of which *up to half a million* die.
The number of "bird flu in humans" is so small that it looks like a fluke. As I said before :
It can only *very very very rarely* enter a human host, only by sheer luck, almost *by error*. We're speaking about a few dozens of individuals each year during avian flu outbreaks, and this is mostly the poeple who are exposed to birds a lot (the farmers handling them working in the overcrowded farms with thousand of chicken cramed in a small place. not the guy eating a chicken wing).
Life sciences are not hardcore-hard sciences. You can never say "never" nor "always". There will always be some weird exception. If you start digging literature for weird case re
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" (it was already a big amount of luck that the *bird* virus managed to infect a human. Jumping from that point onward to another human *again* is like winning a lottery 2 times in a row: *very* unlikely)."
no. It's a numbers game, not 'luck' it will happen. And it's a lot more likely then winning the lottery.
Chicken sluaghter in mass to stop a epidemic from spreading further aren't slaughter with any care toward the fact that people will be eating them.
The virus can also live on the chicken product, so you
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"as U.S. food prices have skyrocketed"
what?
"on bell peppers at $4 each"
holy crap. That must be based on location and not deficit spending and quantitative easing.
My kids love Bell peppers so I buy them regularly. Never seen them higher the 2 dollars, and that's in a bad year off season.
Lets forget personal anecdote and look at the numbers:
http://www.bls.gov/ro3/apmw.htm [bls.gov]
Hey, food prices are down in the US.
There was a spike in 08/09. then slight trend down.
But you keep going on about how your preceived food
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ALL POULTRY SHALL FEAR THE NAME OF... (Score:4, Funny)
...Mosaddeq, the Destroyer of Chickens!
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Hire a contractor. There ain't much call for stomping on chickens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbpKV2iMrKk [youtube.com]
5 days left in 2012 (Score:2)
And so it begins.
150,000 is not 'giant' (Score:2)
I recently visited a poultry farm. The big surprise there was the density of the farm: a single building, maybe 50x30 m housed 60,000 chickens. Now this was a farm that complies with 'free range' criteria, but there's still ~40 chickens per m^2 (in ~6 levels in a column of 2.5 m high). So the 150k chickens would fit in less than a hectare. The numbers involved in chicken farming boggle the mind.
Food Inc (Score:1)
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Why? it's full of hyperbole, isdirect and lies, all wrapped up to scare you.
Like Super Size me, and Gasland.
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a man in Brazil is coughing (Score:3)
Madagascar closes its port.
medicaldaily.com (Score:2)
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Now you know why we don't RTFA around here.
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A cure: cerebral dead! (Score:1)