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RFK Jr. Wants to Let Bird Flu Spread on Poultry Farms. Why Experts Are Concerned
- HelloNurse 2y agoPosting photos of European eggs is already commonplace on Instagram, people will start to flaunt chickens too. But more seriously, chicken shortage will cause someone to die of starvation in the USA.
- duxup 2y agoNot my area of expertise but as far as I can tell RFK's theory that you let bird flu spread and you find magically immune birds ... doesn't appear to have any science backing it. Let alone questions about if you did find some magical immunity... nothing to indicate if it even helps the next season. In fact efforts to DO this thing / find those birds who are immune have failed at every turn. Understandably, researchers (oh wait we're cutting research) have been trying to do this but haven't not found any indications this immunity is a thing. RFK's theory seems to be just BS he got from his head ...
- morkalork 2y agoI'm no biologist but I saw an interesting comment elsewhere that pointed out: Letting too many chickens die now and rebuilding the population in farms from the few survivors will create a genetic bottleneck that will leave them even more susceptible to the next virus that comes along.
- duxup 2y agoI can't find the article when I was googling around but one researcher who was studying survivors did note that they didn't seem to be anymore immune to anything else / no clear advantage to that bird vs any other bird.
- morkalork 2y agoI just have to say that it's a little ironic to see a conservative Republican go with the argument "evolution will fix it"
- fanatic2pope 2y agoWell I mean this is the essence of this neo-Lysenkoism isn't it? The adoption of scientific policy based on ideological alignment rather than merit.
- FrankWilhoit 2y agoFrom the industry perspective, the purpose of culling is to get a head start on the cleanup. Longer downtime will only crimp the egg supply even further.
- duxup 2y agoI think the industry perspective does also consider "this spreading next door is bad" so trying to halt the spread is important and it works.
- stevenwoo 2y agoIt works in other countries, but other countries have much smaller (like 100x-1000x) farms and they also vaccinate their livestock against bird flu. This would cost the USA poultry industry too much profit (going to smaller farms and trade options for non vaccinated eggs are higher). https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24155545/bird-flu-vaccines-h5n1-avian-flu-cows https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24155545/bird-flu-vaccine...
- BobbyTables2 2y agoYeah, if the whole world gotten COVID at the same time, it could have been over in a week or two /s. Of course, there are some drawbacks to such an approach…
- frogperson 2y agoIf you look at his actions through the lens of "If I was Russia, how could I cause damage to the US", then it seems to make sense.
- sherdil2022 2y agoExactly! The situation USA is in is a dream come true for all it’s enemies or nations who want to see it’s downfall. Damage from within. When we have people like the current administration ruining USA from within, who needs external enemies?
- 1970-01-01 2y ago>killing 90 to 100 percent of chickens in three or four days OK this does seem a little high. If you had 10,000 chickens 3 days ago and now have a few hundred, that would be so devastating that farmers would be on national news. Scenes of the devastation would go TikTok viral.
- cafard 2y agoThe good news is that the farmers have an economic interest in not following his advice. If RFK Jr. came up with a reason that farmers should burn down their cornfields, would they do that?
- duxup 2y agoIf it was the difference of reviving the proposed subsidies or not? Maybe?
- jmye 2y agoGod forbid we listen to experts when we have the choice to listen to celebrities and social media, instead. Glad to see scientific literacy falling off a cliff. On the plus side, middle America can stop worrying about the price of eggs, soon.