A senior agriculture ministry official. A spike in avian flu cases in January in Aichi and Chiba prefectures is alarming the agriculture ministry and raising concerns about egg prices remaining high. Authorities have ordered about 4.18 million chickens to be culled.
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We are in a crisis situation with infections occurring successively in the same areas and are concerned about the impact on egg prices.
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MarkX
Is it the industrial type of farming that is causing all these cases of bird flu? Did bird flu occur before but we didn't know about it? For a while, officials were trying to blame migrating birds, but I think that is a bit foolish. Whatever the cause, it is making things more expensive, with no relief in sight.
virusrex
Having lots of animals in close proximity increases the risks of it being transmitted between them, and of course it makes the number of animals that need to be sacrificed higher as well.
Bird flu is a natural disease that is maintained in wild birds and occasionally spills over to domestic birds as well, the importance increase in relationship with the concentration of animals, if 50 chickens in a farm need to be sacrificed when contagion is found it is not really news worthy, but when 50,000 are then it gets reported.
Migrating birds bring the infection to far away locations so it is safe to say they increase the distribution of the disease.
Fortunately at least in Japan vigilance of cases and outbreaks is still strong so problems can be seen coming in advance, the real concern about spillover to humans and the begin of an outbreak is in countries where information is being blocked like in the US this week.
smithinjapan
All those chickens being culled... so... were the factory farms worth it?
Namahage
Treat nature cruelly,and eventually it will return the favour.