Read a news article about a culling of 5.3 million chickens. Is avian flu like a death sentence for chickens? If not, why not isolate them until the virus passes?
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Modern battery meat and egg breeds are basically identical inbred clone cousins of eachother… So when ones sick you can guess who’s next https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_cage
Avian influenza is highly contagious and having an outbreak of it very much impacts trade and sales. It can also infect humans that interact with the birds. It also kills rapidly. There is treatment for avian flu but in conditions where there are a lot of chickens, it can be difficult to detect the symptoms early enough to treat and separate that chicken from the entire flock without there being a risk of it spreading as the medication has to be taken by the bird within the first 48 hours of symptoms. This can especially be difficult because chickens in particular hide when sick.
Because it’s much cheaper to just cull them and rear a new batch. Modern factory farms are insanely cost and time efficient so it costs less to cull them than to keep a bunch of chickens and get recuperated till they are healthy. Not to mention even if the chickens get better, chances are the farm now has a bunch of formerly ill chickens with not as much meat and fat and less optimal to sell.
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