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Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

Massive bird flu outbreak that has killed many egg laying chickens and required euthanizing many more to try to contain the spread.

In just the last 3 months over 30 million chickens were killed, which is about 10% of the total US egg laying chicken population. Overall the US has lost so far something like 40% of its egg laying chickens.

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I guess the flu hasn't made it to the EU, large eggs at Lidl have been about 28 cents each for many months now.

Bird flu in the US has spread to wild animals and other species of wild and domesticated animals so it is very widespread, also there is a vaccine but poultry farms refuse to use it because of cost and it would make the meat/eggs not suitable for export, poultry producers have resorted to making their poultry farms as clean as possible, washing trucks that come onto property, making employees wash and wear protective clothing to prevent contamination and the disease still makes it onto these farms. The method we used last time we had bird flu pandemic on poultry farms was mass culling of flocks that had any infected birds, but it has not worked for long this time so the cycle of kill flock, clean everything out, raise new birds raises long term capital costs for poultry farmers in USA.

We've also had bird flu in NL some years ago, but I don't think it was anywhere near that dramatic. I do vaguely recall that it was mostly an issue for free range chickens, because they go outside and can get infected by wild birds shitting from above. I'd expect indoor chickens to be less vulnerable, though I do recall similar measures to prevent humans from spreading it. I think there have been rules that free range chickens need to get a roof over their heads to prevent spreading.

It's still weird that it got so dramatically out of hand in the US this time.

One thing someone else posted is that poultry farms are 1000 to 10000 times bigger in just number of poultry per facility in the USA, some news report speculation this issue is going to force USA poultry farms to vaccinate - this is already done in Mexico and much of EU including NL, but vaccination has been politicized in the USA and it would cut into profits sans bird flu and corporations run the show here. We know vaccination works because the countries that adapted it stopped it from infecting their farm stock.

The Trump administration has stated that the CDC and other public health organizations cannot release any data or statements without first running them through the organization. So these public health orgs and the general public have not been communicating like they should during such a disaster. It’s insane and because of this we’re only at the tip of the bird flu iceberg.

Send help. Most of us didn’t sign up for this.

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