War on Food: They’re Coming for Your Backyard Chickens…

(by Kit Knightly | Off-Guardian) – Since the “bird flu outbreak” first hit the headlines OffG has been predicting how the inevitable agenda would unfold.

The first impact was as obvious as it was predictable – the price of chicken and eggs went up, this was just another front in the war on food.

The second planned impact was less immediate, but just as predictable if you know how to read the media, and potentially far more harmful in the longterm – clamping down on alternative chicken farming. This includes both organic farms and individuals keeping their own chickens in their garden.

It didn’t take long for the media to prove us right. In fact the Guardian has done it twice in the last ten days.

Firstly, last Thursday, the Guardian ran this article: “Spread of ‘free-range’ farming may raise risk of animal-borne pandemics – study”

Sponsored by the NGO Open Philanthropy, this piece reports that organic and free-range farming could increase the risk of a zoonotic disease outbreak, and quotes the authors of this new study:

If we can’t dramatically cut meat consumption then intensive ‘factory farming’ may be comparatively less risky

…yes. they’re actually arguing that the corporate mega-farms are better at preventing pandemics than free-range or organic farms because they have “tighter biosecurity controls” (meaning their animals never go outside or interact with nature in anyway whatsoever).

Then, in this piece from June 19th, The Guardian asked…

Bird flu is on the rise in the UK. Are chickens in the back garden to blame?

Which quotes the head of virology at the government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha):

The more humans are in contact with birds in an uncontrolled way, the greater is the theoretical risk that people can get infected,”

“Uncontrolled” is very much the key word there.

This scare campaign is not new. Three weeks ago an outbreak of salmonella in the US was blamed on people keeping their own chickens. Read Full Article >