Factory farming causes bird flu outbreaks; farmers paid to kill chickens, not to improve conditions

Caryn Lipson

July 11, 2024

Do we need to keep killing millions of birds to eliminate bird flu? The continuous culling of millions of infected flocks, which is done in a most cruel and inhumane way - demonstrates that killing them isn’t at all effective in eliminating the virus. That's because we haven't gotten rid of the cause of the spread of disease and infection - CAFOs or confined animal feeding operations, aka - factory farms.

U.S. government pays to cull

The government's preferred method of mitigating bird flu among fowl is by culling, essentially killing all the birds in any flock which is found to have a bird harboring the virus. Veterinarians and animal rights groups consider the method used — shutting off the ventilation in the barn, pumping in hot air, and allowing them to die a slow, painful death — to be inhumane, the New York Times (NYT) reported.

For their losses, U.S. farmers are compensated with millions of taxpayer dollars. The USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) uses the money as a way to encourage early notification by farmers of bird flu among their flocks in its attempt to limit its spread to others. (The USDA is the same agency currently working to create a bird flu that transmits between humans.)

Last year, the Department of Agriculture paid poultry producers more than half a billion dollars for the turkeys, chickens and egg-laying hens they were forced to kill after the flu strain, H5N1, was detected on their farms.

Officials say the compensation program is aimed at encouraging farms to report outbreaks quickly. That’s because the government pays for birds killed through culling, not those that die from the disease. Early reporting, the agency says, helps to limit the virus’s spread to nearby farms.

The Guardian reported in 2022 that by June of that year 38 million birds had already been killed by ventilation shutdown, a method banned by the European Union. The United State's Veterinary Association, however, permits it for 'depopulation,' as journalist Marina Bolotnikova explains.

Workers have described the method as like “roasting animals alive”. European officials have said it should not be used in the European Union.

In the US, however, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) lists ventilation shutdown with supplemental heat as “permitted in constrained circumstances” for “depopulation”.

A new analysis has found that it has now become the main method for killing birds, used in nearly three-quarters of culls.

During the last bird flu outbreak in 2015, birds in the U.S. were killed with a different, but still painful, process - gassing them with carbon dioxide or spraying them with firefighting foam:

This [ventilation shutdown] represents a dramatic shift from the last bird flu epidemic, in 2015, which resulted in the killing of 50 million farmed birds in the US. During that outbreak, the animals were predominantly killed by carbon dioxide poisoning or smothered in a blanket of firefighting foam.

The reason for the change, a USDA spokesperson said, was that “some housing designs do not allow for effective depopulation using foam” and that the carbon dioxide method was “hindered by supply shortages.”

In the EU and the UK, rather than using firefighting foam, birds are culled with carbon dioxide gas or nitrogen-infused foam because, when carried out correctly, they render the animals unconscious before killing them, though still causing pain.

Overcrowding promotes disease

Critics of large-scale farming believe that paying farmers for killing their birds allows the farm conditions that create the problem to continue, without any incentive to change their practices, NYT author Andrew Jacobs continues.

“These payments are crazy-making and dangerous,” said Andrew deCoriolis, Farm Forward’s executive director. “Not only are we wasting taxpayer money on profitable companies for a problem they created, but we’re not giving them any incentive to make changes.”

Senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs at the National Chicken Council Ashley Peterson claims that criticism of confined farming practices is “the work of vegan extremist groups who are latching on to an issue to try and advance their agenda,” Jacobs reported.

Contrary to Peterson's assertion, research shows that confined farming does contribute to the spread of disease among animals.

The congregation of susceptible animals in CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding operations] can lead to heavy environmental contamination with pathogens, promoting the emergence of hyper-transmissible, and virulent pathogens. As a result, CAFOs have been associated with emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses, hepatitis E virus, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Streptococcus suis, livestock-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and Cryptosporidium parvum in farm animals. This has led to increased transmission of zoonotic pathogens in humans and changes in disease patterns in general communities. (Emphases added)

CAFOs promote warp-speed disease spread

The Highwire host Del Bigtree, as shown in the video below, raises bird flu concerns with epidemiologist and Former Member of the German Parliament, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg. Wodarg explains how factory farming contributes to outbreaks.

‍Factory farming provides a good breeding ground for all kinds of microorganisms. And under this conditions [sic] they multiply much faster than in nature

Small farms have much smaller risks for an outbreak of infections. This is what they don’t want to hear. . . It’s much more risk for the cattle and for the chicken who are kept in such unnatural conditions.

WHO believes factory farming spreads disease

An article by The Guardian in 2021 "predicted" the spread of more serious types of bird flu as a consequence of the overcrowded conditions that are factory farms.

The WHO suspects, but has no proof, that Covid-19 is linked to the intensive breeding of animals in south-east Asia’s many barely regulated wildlife farms. Major outbreaks over the past 30 years including Q fever in the Netherlands and highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks have been linked with intensive livestock farming.

. . . scientific evidence shows that stressful, crowded conditions drive the emergence and spread of many infectious diseases, and act as an “epidemiological bridge” between wildlife and human infections.

UN bodies, academics and epidemiologists recognise the link between the emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses and increasingly intensive poultry farming. (Emphases added.)

Can't blame wild birds

Author John Vidal quotes America virologist Rob Wallace who says we shouldn't blame wild birds for this man-made problem.

Wild birds are routinely blamed by governments and industry for spreading avian flu along migratory routes, but evidence is mounting that intensive farms are potential “mixing pots” for new, deadly viruses.

“Blaming migratory waterfowl … is clearly no longer a tenable position,” says Rob Wallace, an American virologist who argues that the new strains of flu emerging are adapting to industrial poultry production. “Influenza’s infiltration into industrial livestock and poultry is so complete that these farms now act as their own reservoirs [of disease],” he says. “They are their own source.” (Emphasis added.)

The Vox video below shows how disease can spread in factory farms.

A CAFO is an environment built for only one purpose: to house as many animals as possible. What worries scientists is that also makes it an ideal environment for the pathogens that cause pandemics. (Emphasis added.)