US egg factory roasts alive 5.3 million chickens in avian flu cull – then fires almost every worker

[Yuli Ban]

The culling has been repeated at chicken and turkey farms across Iowa and 28 other states from Maine to Utah. More than 22 million birds have been killed in an attempt to contain the outbreak – the majority in Iowa, the US’s biggest producer of eggs. The slaughter of 5.3 million hens at Rembrandt is the largest culling at any factory farm in the country.

[Ozzie guy]

I should be worried about the chickens but it instead reminds me of a thought I was having the other day.

We are just the farm animals of generating profit for companies, when someone is in control of AGI or even when a group of people is in control akin to the group of people in control of those chicken farms. Why would they care about us outside of being some kind of toy for their life as they are assend to near infinite power. Why should they not kill us for their own power or even just why should they not make our lives shit or even why should they not stop us from getting the same quality of life as them.

[erowind]

Poor chickens, both for having the misfortune of life in a factory farm and for being culled because of our mismanagement. Hopefully not poor us soon. The chances of another pandemic so soon are very low, and I'll stick to that prediction I made on the last forum. But I'd be lying if the whole situation isn't making me nervous. What with the first human infected with H3N8 in China recently and all.

https://www.reuters.com/business/health ... 022-04-26/

[wjfox]

Appalling.

One of the major reasons why cultured meats can't come soon enough.

In a century or two, we'll look back in horror at the way we treated animals, just like we view slavery in the 18th-19th centuries.

[Vakanai]

I can't really feel for farm chickens or similar animals bred for slaughter. My initial reaction to this news is "Darn, what a sad waste of meat. But better than risking avian flu on top of everything else in the world today."

Don't misunderstand me, I wish they had died more humanely, and I feel some repercussions should be dealt out to those who thought roasting them alive was the best way to dispose of them. But I don't care that they died in and of itself. The notion some have that meat is murder is baffling to me, although how they're treated before meeting their end does bother me. Basically, I'm fine with meat and don't hold eating it as wrong, but needless animal cruelty is, well, just cruelty. This method of disposal was probably chosen as some cost cutting measure, which is just...no.

[caltrek]

The Horrific Bird Flu that has Wiped out 36 Million Chickens and Turkeys, Explained
by Kenny Torrella
May 5, 2022

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2305 ... n-shutdown

Extract:

(Vox) While the virus has a near 100 percent mortality rate among infected poultry — and can spread rapidly among birds, especially in packed industrial farming conditions — it’s currently believed to pose little threat to human beings. It only rarely spills over to people, and only to those who come into close contact with infected birds. Even when there are human infections, “the viruses are unable to efficiently transmit between humans,” notes Michelle Wille, a virus ecologist at the University of Sydney.

But when certain strains of avian flu do manage to infect humans, it can be deadly. From 2003 to 2021, a little more than half of the 863 people who contracted an earlier strain of H5N1 died. The H5N1 strain currently spreading appears to be less transmissible and less severe to humans than those that infected people in the past, and only two people have tested positive for the strain — a man in the United Kingdom last December, and a man in Colorado last week.
…
Beyond the occasional one-off case in close human contacts, the bigger worry is that an unchecked flu that spreads among birds has plenty of opportunities to mutate in a way that allows it to transmit efficiently from person to person, thereby kicking off a new influenza pandemic. A widespread bird flu outbreak in 2005 raised alarm bells and prompted the US Senate to allocate $4 billion to prepare for a possible influenza pandemic — though when a new flu pandemic did break out in 2009, the origin was ultimately found in a swine virus.
…
Dena Jones of the Animal Welfare Institute says the 2014-2015 bird flu outbreak in the US, which led to the culling of more than 50 million animals — the largest cull in US history — didn’t prompt any real change in the industry. Instead, mega operations that raise millions of birds per year are continuing to be built across the country…as US chicken and egg consumption rises.

“We’re doubling down on this same system by raising more animals with less genetic diversity and higher density in larger operations, and all of that contributes to making it difficult to humanely kill an animal during an emergency,” Jones said.