BIRD FLU AND THE USDA
By now many of you may know that Sec. of Ag Brooke Rollins rolled out a 5-point plan to reduce egg prices yesterday. It's pretty much the same old same old, except for a clear interest in offering something beside mass extermination. That's a positive development.
Of course, that option, in the plan, hinges on developing a vaccine. The current vaccine increases the virulence of bird flu, but that's what's being done experimentally right now. The poultry industry is pushing back hard on a blanket vaccine because it'll stop exports--many countries won't take products from vaccinated birds because they think it makes the strains mutate faster and become more virulent. Duh.
Vaccinating chickens isn't like vaccinating cows--giving millions of chickens a shot is a nightmare logistically. So the academic experts are hoping for a drinkable vaccine, which isn't really even discussable yet. Who knows how far away it is?
The first point of the strategy is the most scary. It clearly wants to prohibit any visitors to farms, and any vehicles going in and out must be hosed off both directions. If this became policy, it would destroy on-farm visits and sales, a devastating development for all of us who have an open door and people-centric philosophy.
They're looking at importing eggs from foreign countries. Delightful. Interestingly, they're looking at stopping the animal welfare cage-free requirements of California. This has nothing to do with bird flu; they're blaming cage-free on high egg prices. That may or may not be the case, but for the federal government to involve itself in the marketplace to this extent indicates a dramatic top-down mentality with bureaucrats running the show.
I thought that's what Trump was elected to stop. Not more government, but less.
Here are the facts as I know them:
1. Waterfowl are not transporting the new highly virulent strain, which was created by gain-of-function research labs in Netherlands, Wisconsin, and Georgia (see Dr. Peter McCullough's expose on origins). Ducks aren't dying and they aren't transmitting.
2. Of the 160-million plus chickens exterminated in the last 24 months, a tiny fraction was sick. The lion's share were perfectly healthy; they were killed because they lived near the sick ones. No respectable, thinking, reasonable farmer destroys survivors. We use them to breed the next vibrant generation.
3. The PCR test at 45 cycles, which is the official protocol from FDA and USDA, is labeled fraudulent by a healthy contingent of scientists. At that magnification, you can find bird flu on your dining room table. It makes you wonder if there is an agenda.
4. Zero studies are being conducted to find out why some birds are immune, why this hits some areas and not others, and other natural and flock immunity options. The paradigm of mass extermination limits the questions bureaucrats ask.
5. By and large, farmers do not own the birds being killed. The industry owns the birds being killed. Farmers don't get compensation. But they still have mortgages and maintenance bills to pay.
6. The federal government, by words and action, believes your chickens and mine are part of the "national flock." This terminology swept into the government verbiage about a decade ago. Your chickens belong to society, to the state. This means government agents can trespass to conduct tests, take your chickens with violence, and incinerate them even if they show zero symptoms of illness. This change in mentality rode in on the back of mad cow and the hoof and mouth outbreaks in Great Britain.
Will Rollins' solutions bring down egg prices?