"The ducks in the henhouse"
Wild birds are being blamed for the death of 19 million chickens. Yet factory farms are the real problem.
By Eve Johnson
Published: April 13, 2004
TheTyee.ca
Yes, the scope of the avian flu epidemic in the Fraser Valley staggers the imagination. How do we digest the idea of 19 million birds, mostly chickens, all being killed over a matter of a few weeks? It's hard enough to imagine 19 million chickens living, much less all dying at once, between here and Hope.
How did there get to be so many of them, so close to us, so close to each other, so vulnerable to viral infections?
Johnson continues, revealing the disastrous truth behind the epidemic: what really started it, how the industry won't take the blame, and how mistreated chickens are in today's world. Why should their conditions matter to us? We eat them.
