Will Avian Flu Change The Food System?

[BA Deere]

   well I suppose these 'ex-perts" see geese pooping around ponds and conclude that they all go "number 2" before takeoff so that they are lighter and require a shorter runway      But in flight, if that chili burrito starts rumbling...they aren`t going to have time to land at the nearest Texaco  

The way the egg industry has gotten, even I`m surprised and I`m in the midst of it.  Chicken manure is a very reasonable and common fertilizer here in Iowa and the wind always blows as evidenced by all our windmills.

What you have is Iowa I think is by far the biggest egg producer and they are consentrated in just 3 or 4 counties. not sure exactly but 1/4 or 1/3 of the nation`s eggs are produced in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota, so if there`s a virus outbreak involving chickens it`s a catastrophe to the nations egg supply.  But those bird houses were built when corn has historically been the cheapest (not always the case anymore) and easy access to rail and natural gas.

This biggest is probably a necessary evil, because I doubt that any millennial farmer these days would want to mess with small flocks.  But in the 70`s i recall my Mom raised a small number of eggs, every few days she would sell them up in Albert Lea, they would be in i think 3 dozen flats stacked up.  Well one day the folks came back from selling and they had also gotten groceries, I was helping unpack and here they had bought a dozen of eggs.    I asked Dad "what the heck I thought you guys were selling eggs???"  Well, they sold eggs for 30¢ ...but were they bought groceries eggs were 9¢..It wasn`t long after that, the small egg producer dried up.  

[k-289]

SW and others I have a question - have you ever been in a 2500 ft. building full of poultry at 0 degrees F and or temps of 100 F and seen the conditions  - stop voting for  I D I O T S   ?

[bruce MN]

Thinking from some of what I've picked up that this is above the pay grade of USDA and Fed and State vets and animal health boards. Anything big and definitive will come out of the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. Their concern is the potential of mutation and I'd suspect they don't want a buttload of recovered birds hanging around in facilities that have gone through infection. Thus the summary destruction of infected flocks. People that I've talked to on the inside tell me that a substantial % of birds survive if the flu is left to run and most thrive. Lots of PR emphasis on "no threat to humans" which can be taken in a number of ways. The potentiality of something akin to the Spanish Flu outbreak of 95 years ago which killed 10s of millions in short order. That before anybody even knew what it was, in an era where hardly anybody went anywhere even remotely far from home, other than a few sailors and those sent off to fight wars. Av Flu mutates and it's in every corner of the planet in a heartbeat, virtually overnight

[sw363535]

I know how those same groups dealt with the melon issue in eastern colorado...... Never came close to finding what caused the contamination..........  Just found someone and something to hang the blame on....so they could get back out of the heat....

Were there contributing factors brought about by changes in confinement requirements?   If there were it will never be a conclusion....

Consider the posibility,   

[Kay/NC]

I wonder if the laying hens had been left to weather it out, instead of being euthanized, if the eggs now missing in the pipeline would have sat in coolers, because consumers feared them. You sort of have to ask yourself whether the " shortage"-driven price spike doesn't help keep that industry as an overall sort of level, in terms of revenue.

There was no lacl of cartons in the cases locally in NC yesterday, but the price of $3.07 for unbranded eggs, right at $4 for the brands, made me ask myself why a problem that appears not to have actually manifested here in production causes that kind of a cost to consumers. Am I missing something?

[Kay/NC]

Back when farm kids could earn a certain amount annually without paying income taxes, my two younger sisters and I were put into the egg business. My Saturday mornings were consumed with delivering thirty-dizen cases to a gricery store and restaurant.

On the end stop at the store, I had to buy what was on the grocery list for the family for the week ahead. Theoretically, the money was " ours". In reality, when my mother wanted an Ethan Allen suite for my bedroom in the new addition, I had to buy it...not what I would have chosen, but "choice" is a nebulous thing.

There was enough left over for Mike and me to make the 20% down payment on our first home. It was a nice 3- bedroom brick rancher with fireplace, custom cabinets, etc. Not bad for " egg money".

It is hard to imagine a family doing today exactly what we did back then. Regulations have overcomplicated something that simple into a nightmare of epic proportions.

With two fairly decent henhouses in the yard at our second home in Virginia, and a nice coop we could move from the yard of that brick house to Carolina, I really found myself yearning for a few fat hens and a cocky rooster this spring. I hope we can start Winn with a handful of layers next spring, but one more thing to do right now would just be one too many....