Who Pays for Bird Flu?
Peter Singer
Fifty years ago, American chicken farmers found that by keeping their birds
in sheds they could produce chickens for the table more cheaply and with less
work than by traditional farmyard methods. The new method spread: chickens
disappeared from fields into long, windowless sheds. Factory farming was born.
It isnt called factory farming merely because those sheds look like
factories. Everything about the production method is geared towards turning
live animals into machines for converting grain into meat or eggs at the lowest
possible cost.
Walk into such a shed if the producer will let you and you will find up
to 30,000 chickens. The National Chicken Council, the trade association for the
US chicken industry, recommends a stocking density of 85 square inches per bird
less than a standard sheet of typing paper. When the chickens approach market
weight, they cover the floor completely. No chicken can move without having to
push through other birds. In the egg industry, hens can barely move at all,
because they are crammed into wire cages, which makes it possible to stack them
in tiers, one above the other.
Environmentalists point out that this production method is unsustainable. For
a start, it relies on the use of fossil fuel energy to light and ventilate the
sheds, and to transport the grain eaten by the chickens. When this grain, which
humans could eat directly, is fed to chickens, they use some of it to create
bones and feathers and other body parts that we cannot eat. So we get less food
back than we put into the birds and less protein, too while disposing of
the concentrated chicken manure causes serious pollution to rivers and ground
water.
Animal-welfare advocates protest that crowding the chickens keeps them from
forming a natural flock, causes them stress, and, in the case of laying hens,
prevents them from even stretching their wings. The air in the sheds is high in
ammonia from bird feces, which are usually allowed to pile up for months and
in some cases for a year or more before being cleaned out. Medical experts
warn that because the birds are routinely fed antibiotics to keep them growing
in such crowded, filthy, and stressful conditions, antibiotic-resistant
bacteria could cause a public-health threat.
Yet, despite these well-founded criticisms, over the last 20 years factory
farming not only of chickens, but also of pigs, veal calves, dairy cows, and,
in outdoor feedlots, cattle has spread rapidly in developing countries,
especially in Asia. Now we are discovering that the consequences may be far
more deadly than we ever imagined.
As University of Ottawa virologist Earl Brown put it after a Canadian
outbreak of avian influenza, high-intensity chicken rearing is a perfect
environment for generating virulent avian flu viruses.
Other experts agree. In October 2005, a United Nations task force identified
as one of the root causes of the bird flu epidemic, farming methods which
crowd huge numbers of animals into small spaces.
Supporters of factory farming often point out that bird flu can be spread by
free-range flocks, or by wild ducks and other migrating birds, who may join the
free-range birds to feed with them or drop their feces while flying overhead.
But, as Brown has pointed out, viruses found in wild birds are generally not
very dangerous.
On the contrary, it is only when these viruses enter a high-density poultry
operation that they mutate into something far more virulent. By contrast, birds
that are reared by traditional methods are likely to have greater resistance to
disease than the stressed, genetically similar birds kept in intensive
confinement systems. Moreover, factory farms are not biologically secure. They
are frequently infested with mice, rats, and other animals that can bring in
diseases.
So far, a relatively small number of human beings have died from the current
strain of avian influenza, and it appears that they have all been in contact
with infected birds. But if the virus mutates into a form that is transmissible
between humans, the number of deaths could run into the hundreds of millions.
Governments are, rightly, taking action to prepare for this threat. Recently,
the US Senate approved spending $8 billion to stockpile vaccines and other
drugs to help prevent a possible bird flu epidemic. Other governments have
already spent tens of millions on vaccines and other preventive measures.
What is now clear, however, is that such government spending is really a kind
of subsidy to the poultry industry. Like most subsidies, it is bad economics.
Factory farming spread because it seemed to be cheaper than more traditional
methods. In fact, it was cheaper only because it passed some of its costs on to
others for example, to people who lived downstream or downwind from the
factory farms, and could no longer enjoy clean water and air.
Now we see that these were only a small part of the total costs. Factory
farming is passing far bigger costs and risks on to all of us. In economic
terms, these costs should be internalized by the factory farmers rather than
being shifted onto the rest of us.
That wont be easy to do, but we could make a start by imposing a tax on
factory-farm products until enough revenue is raised to pay for the precautions
that governments now have to take against avian influenza. Then we might
finally see that chicken from the factory farm really isnt so cheap after all.
** Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. His recent
books include Writings on an Ethical Life and One World. He is now completing a
book on food and ethics. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2005.
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