Re: AsianAvian Birdflu

[John M <***>]

Judith
I made an 'off topic' s(n)ide remark about mad cows in
a post about bird flu and got a long text on mad cows.
I studied them as well and have some additional info
on animal farming so most of your post is "not for
me".
E.g. did you know that in pig-farming the excrement of
the fat ones is mixed into the feed of the beginners,
who can utilize the remnant "statrch-value" left not
totally digested by the 'overweight' swine? 
I had a job to outline a water pollution plan for a
chicken farm (PA, not far from Easton). 100,000 souls
were stuffed in a building good enough for ~2,000 and
they crowled above each other to lay eggs rolling into
collector troughs. Stench etc. It was the 'real'
chicken inferno. I could not propose an efficient plan
without a substantial reorganization what the farm did
not go along with.

Of course all kind of animal waste (cadavers, bones,
etc.) gets milled into diverse animal feed, even into
human food (eg. the bovine joint-liquor serves as an
additive to be beaten with eggwhite in
bakery-products.
Lately even the shrimp and crab industry utilizes the
shell-chitin (chitosan) for food, medicine, plastics
which was a stinking rottable waste not so long ago. 

I have good old Hungarian jokes how syphilis got into
humans.

Thanks for the valuable info on birds' social habits,
I for one don't like to socialize with ANY animals.
not even fleas. I just eat them (not the fleas), only
our very early ancestors were insectivores and this
has contributed to the bigger brain by animal protein
ingestion. (cf: australopithecus gracilis vs robustus)

It seems I got my answer to the question.

Thanks

John

--- Judith Rosen <***> wrote:

> John M.
> 
> You've made quite a few assumptions about how the
> chickens are raised, 
> what they are fed, and what their behavior is--
> there's a lot more to 
> the story. As for mad cow disease, there's a lot
> more to that story, as 
> well. I went into deep-research mode when the
> infected cow was found in 
> North America and was horrified by what I learned.
> I've posted some of 
> this information in the past, by the way. Basically,
> both epidemics 
> stem from very poor "animal husbandry" practices
> which have developed 
> within the factory farming trend. Number one is
> over-crowding. That's 
> the mono-culture, right there. It also tends to
> cause unsanitary 
> conditions which can breed further disease and
> generally weaken the 
> animals. Factory farms compensate for this via
> routine use of 
> antibiotics and fungicides, which encourages
> resistant pathogens to 
> evolve. Number two is pushing rapid growth over
> health, including the 
> use of hormones if necessary. Number three is the
> feed: among other 
> things, I'm afraid that chickens ARE being forced to
> eat chickens and 
> other animals as well. Large multinational companies
> like Cargill have 
> "closed the loop" in the food industry by buying up
> factory farms, 
> feedlots (where the animals are raised),
> slaughterhouses, and animal 
> feed manufacturing companies-- where they actually
> use the offal from 
> the slaughterhouses to manufacture feed for new
> animals. Before 
> regulation stepped in, they were making cannibals of
> most of our meat 
> animals, which are vegetarian by nature. And THAT is
> how mad cow 
> disease has been turned into an epidemic.
> 
> Yes, in the absence of "animal by-products" in the
> feed, the only way 
> for new animals to be infected with the prions
> (other than being born 
> to an infected mother) was to ingest grass in
> pastures that others of 
> the same species spent a lot of time in (including
> giving birth in, 
> because the blood carries the most prions, of all
> body fluids, as far 
> as is currently known). The prions persist for a
> long time; no one 
> knows how long, but they are damn near impossible to
> kill! Heat doesn't 
> kill them, acid doesn't kill them, it's really scary
> what I found on 
> the World Health Organization website about "how to
> sterilize surgical 
> equipment that has been used on someone with mad cow
> disease" or the 
> human version-- basically, you can't. They said the
> best you can do is 
> to soak the equipment in powerful acid for several
> hours and then 
> autoclave, but that may not eliminate all danger of
> contagion. I have 
> read several accounts describing how it is possible
> to incinerate the 
> surgical instruments until there's nothing left but
> ash, and still 
> isolate viable prions in the residue. I don't
> understand that, I really 
> don't.
> 
> Back on the ranch... The problem hasn't been
> eliminated with the 
> regulations prohibiting cannibal-feed because these
> multinational 
> companies are so huge, they have numerous ways to
> get around such 
> regulation. For example, a law was enacted
> prohibiting feeding the 
> slaughterhouse by-products of animals to the same
> species in their 
> feed. However, it's become a shell game, whereby
> cows are fed to 
> various other animals and various other animals are
> fed back to cows. 
> In one of the more disgusting revelations, which I
> remember posting to 
> the list, I found that soiled chicken litter was
> being recycled as 
> "winter feed" for cows-- the company did a
> nutritional analysis of 
> soiled chicken litter and the numbers turned up to
> look even better 
> than the regular winter feed. But they feed cow
> by-products to 
> chickens! The slaughterhouses are also not
> segregated by species: cows 
> and sheep and pigs may all be "processed" in the
> same facility, which 
> means that the blood and tissue become commingled to
> some degree. Given 
> how infectious prions are when blood is on surgical
> instruments...
> 
> With the avian flu, I confess I haven't researched
> how it mutated, etc. 
> However, it should come as no surprise that a new
> strain is causing an 
> epidemic because the overcrowding alone would be
> sufficient to lead to 
> an epidemic. Closer to home, salmonella has become a
> fact of life with 
> factory farmed chickens and eggs because of the
> unsanitary and 
> overcrowded conditions on these farms (not to
> mention the 
> slaughterhouses).  Since the avian flu can spread to
> other birds and to 
> humans, there is no longer any way to contain it.
> (Birds do sneeze and 
> cough, by the way, and I'm not sure about chickens,
> but many species of 
> birds certainly exchange body fluids beak to beak,
> if you want to call 
> that "kissing". My parakeets do a lot of "feeding"
> each other, which 
> involves regurgitating partially digested food...
> ick! But it's one of 
> the ways social bonds are maintained within a
> community of birds.)
> 
> These multi-national companies (I know of about a
> half-dozen, but I'm 
> sure there must be more) are huge, with gross annual
> profits in the 
> tens of billions. They are entrenched in countries
> all over the world 
> and when they are regulated too much for comfort in
> one country, they 
> can just switch their distribution to get around the
> laws and then 
> re-introduce the product as a new import. In an
> ominous new development 
> in this situation, these same companies are also the
> ones pushing 
> research and development of genetically engineered
> food crops. For 
> example, Cargill donates vast amounts of money to
> big agricultural 
> universities for the purpose of developing and
> testing the various 
> combinations and permutations. Often, the crops
> aren't being engineered 
> to taste better or to be more nutritious... they are
> being engineered 
> to be resistant to the weed-killing chemicals that
> can then be sprayed 
> on the fields, decreasing the toll weeds can wreak,
> by competing with 
> the crop for nutrients and water, etc. They are also
> being engineered 
> to produce their own pesticides. This is one of Dr.
> Mae-Wan Ho's 
> biggest areas of concentration, and most of her
> newsletters are on some 
> aspect of this subject. According to her, animals
> are almost universal 
> in their aversion to genetically engineered feed,
> when given a choice 
> between that and natural feed. She also says there
> are links between 
> the genetically engineered feed and birth defects or
> other pathological 
> side-effects in animals forced to eat it.
> 
> In any case, the whole situation of how our species
> has taken the 
> machine metaphor to an extreme and applied it to
> growing/producing our 
> food is clearly gone badly wrong and the solution is
> organic meat and 
> produce. The produce may cost more, but it has also
> been proven via 
> analysis to be a great deal more nutritious as well.
> Factory farmed 
> produce is now a nutritional shadow of its former
> self and the causes 
> have been traced, in part, to the depletion of
> bio-diversity in soil 
> ecosystems that heavy use of chemical fertilizers
> and 
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