Bird Flu

Throughout the history, influenza viruses have caused several pandemics or global epidemics, killing many people. For example, the influenza strike in 1918 to 1919 infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, which is one-third of the planet’s population at the time and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million people. More than 25 percentage of the U.S. population were affected, and caused 675,000 deaths in U.S during the pandemic.(History, 2015). There were no effective treatments for this type of influenza and no available vaccines can prevent its spread during the period. (History, 2015) U.S government required general population to wear masks and other protective equipments in public areas, and many public places also closed due to the influenza strike. Health care providers tried everything they knew to save people, but none shows any evidence of effects. (National Center for Biotechnology Information [NCBI], 2015). Scientists found out that the influenza virus had invaded their lungs and caused pneumonia, which made so many people died from the pandemic (History,2015). Another influenza strike happened

A pandemic differs from epidemic because a pandemic affects a large area while an epidemic affects a localized area. Old people, young kids (approximately younger than 5) and pregnant women are more at risk of getting ill from a pandemic or epidemic. The conditions of declaring a pandemic is if the virus is able to cause serious illnesses or even deaths it has to be a virus that can be spread from human to human It also needs to have little to none immunity levels. The societal factors that will increase the pandemic are water supply, sanitation facilities, food, climate, and temperature. Water supply could be a factor because people could have contaminated the water causing the water to infectious meaning that if they drink it then they could get the disease themselves. Food because if they kill and eat an animal without killing all the bacteria in the animal then they could get the disease. Climate and temperature because sometimes if the temperature becomes too hot then that could make the bacteria increase

For example, 91 pounds of chicken is to be consumed by Americans in 2017 (The National Chicken Council 2012). Within the factory farming of Tysons foods Inc., a major international food industry dealing with a majority of chicken, are seen to be abusing and slaughtering birds irresponsibly. Their shelters dark and filled with thousands of birds, either dead or alive making it possible for the ones alive to pick up a disease. Then transported to the factories where they are not properly put to death by workers lacking in their ability to do the job correctly. On Food Inc. a farmer by the name of Carole Morison stood up against Perdue’s farming styles and showed her farm to filmers. As seen in the video chickens are dying by the workers abuse, antibiotics being fed to them, and diseases in the shelters (Food Inc. 2008)

Factory farming is a practice that is used to keep up and sustain the supply and demand for different types of animal meat. A poultry factory farm that will be discussed is Perdue Farms. Perdue Farms is established and operated in the United States and has a processing facility where they raise and slaughter chickens. Perdue Farms is meeting the needs of the consumers by supplying and mass producing poultry for consumption. One may view this of being a success by having a well-established, profitable business that is fulfilling their responsibilities to the consumers. While that may be true, they are not fulfilling their ethical responsibility to the animals. These animals are in close quarters where they are nested in urine and feces. There can even be instances where they will be sitting on or near deceased chickens until their cage is chosen for slaughter. Since these animals are massively produced the use of hormones and antibiotics are used to sustain life and growth. On top of the poor, dirty living conditions these animals are also giving additives that will eventually make it to the consumer. The process has an impact on those employed by the corporation and those who purchase products from them.

According to the Wholesome Poultry Products Act if Polyface expanded and produced more chickens (>20,000) it would have to outsource the processing of chickens to a certified slaughterhouse. This contract would be expensive for Polyface and would also limit the use of slaughter waste (internal organs) as fertilizer at the

Influenza is well-defined as a minor, but commonly epidemic disease that occurred in several of ways, also caused by numerous of rapidly mutating viral strains. It characterized by the respiratory symptoms and general prostration. The Spanish flu was not a normal epidemic, it was a dangerous pandemic. Epidemics affect individuals at the same time in areas where the disease does not normally spread. A pandemic is an epidemic on a national, international, or global scale. The Spanish flu was different from a usual flu in one big great terrifying way, which had a remarkably high death rate between healthy individuals around the age fifteen to thirty four. There has been such a high death rate in this type if age group in an epidemic prior to or since the Spanish flu of 1918.

We have all wondered where, and how the poultry that is in our grocery stores had gotten there at some point in time, whether if we eat meat or not. When we find out, we are not too ecstatic with the results. It is unbelievable what they do just in order to get profit from the many variations of chicken the companies produce. They treat the birds as if they are not a living, breathing animal sitting right in front of them. They have no sympathy, for this wonderful creation, and all that it has to offer us. The companies only care about the money, and will do anything to get it. Big chicken industries such as Tyson and Perdue, force farmers to raise their chickens in certain ways, and by doing this, the chickens are raised in unhealthy conditions, which puts consumers’ health at risk.

It’s problematic that we don’t question the food we eat whether it be from McDonalds or a fancy upscale restaurant. We need to be more aware of what is going on around us especially when the food we eat is causing an array of health issues for us. The unsanitary conditions found within the factory farm industry contributes to the pathogens found in the meat we eat. As the saying goes you get what you pay for. Factory farming is based upon producing large quantities of meat at a very low cost. This driving force behind the system is not worth getting food poising or something detrimental. In the chapter “Influence / Speechlessness” the habitats of the chickens are displayed “jamming deformed, drugged,

This leads to 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths each year. According to the CDC (Centers for disease and control and Prevention) from the years 2005-2010 there were 39 outbreaks and 2,348 illnesses recorded from the 15 different countries that the United States imported foods from. What was peculiar about the imports was that 45 percent of the imports that caused outbreaks were from Asia. Another reason why increased trade in food lead to food-borne illnesses is because of the diseases of the people in developing countries that import the food to the US. Unfortunately, most of the people that work in the fields in third world countries have very low wages and due to that, do not have access to proper healthcare. This leads to the worker not staying home when they're sick and continue working regardless of their health. So, food that was imported from those countries could've been picked with someone with a contagious disease such as an intestinal disease or something worse, which leads to food-borne illnesses in the US. All of these reasons contribute to my decision that I would highly recommend the US and other countries to build more farms and not become so industrialized, that they have to import food to survive. Decreasing imported food from Asia will especially do much

The USDA issued interim regulations that restricted the interstate sale and transportation of eggs and poultry from flocks to protect the community from salmonella- infected eggs. The USDA has to collects samples from the flock, and if any of the test came out positive and its movement in interstate commerce would be restricted. In 1990, salmonella outbreaks were traced to three houses owned by Rose Acre Farms. Because the “test flocks” tested positive, USDA officials removed and killed sixty hens from the

Influenza, normally called “the flu”, the influenza virus causes an infection in the respiration tract. Even though the influenza virus can sometimes be compared with the common cold. It also can cause a more severe illness or death. During this past century, pandemics took place in 1918, 1957, and 1968, in all of these cases there where unfortunately many deaths. The “Spanish flu” in 1918, killed approximately half a million people in the United States alone. It killed around 20 million worldwide. The “Asian flu” in 1957, in the United States their 70,000 people died. In 1968 the “Hong-Kong flu” There where 34,000 deaths in the United

Wild aquatic fowl, ducks in particular, serve as a reservoir for the Influenza virus to transmit into poultry and then to humans. Infected birds shed flu viruses in their saliva, nasal secretions, and feces (CDC, 2004). The current virus seen in Asia is denoted as H5N1 and was first seen in terns in South Africa in 1961 (CDC, 2004). The first human seen infection of the avian H5N1 viruses was in 1997 in Hong Kong in a three- year old boy (Ruben, 2005). The outbreak involved 18 cases and killed 6, one third of the confirmed infected population (Rueben, 2005). In three days 1.5 million birds were killed in order to prevent further spread. A new pandemic is now on the horizon with recent outbreaks in poultry in the eight Asian countries of Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam since 2004 (CDC, 2005). As of July 5, 2005, there have been 108 reported human cases of the H5N1 virus with 54 deaths (CDC, 2004). In wake of a

Poultry is by far the number one meat consumed in America; it is versatile, relatively inexpensive compared to other meats, and most importantly it can be found in every grocery store through out the United States. All of those factors are made possible because of factory farming. Factory farming is the reason why consumers are able to purchase low-priced poultry in their local supermarket and also the reason why chickens and other animals are being seen as profit rather than living, breathing beings. So what is exactly is factory farming? According to Ben Macintyre, a writer and columnist of The Times, a British newspaper and a former chicken farm worker, he summed up the goal of any factory farm “... to produce the maximum quantity of

Poultry plays very important role for mankind through food supply, income and employment generation, providing raw materials to some industries, facilitating research works etc. Family poultry makes up to 80 percent of poultry stocks in low-income food-deficit countries (Pym et al., 2006) where owners raise poultry in small numbers ranging from single birds up to a few hundred.

A recent report from HSBC isn’t quite so alarming…unless you read between the lines. “World agricultural markets,” it says, “have become so finely balanced between supply and demand that local disruptions can have a major impact on the global prices of the affected commodities and then reverberate throughout the entire food chain.”