Confessions of a Steward JOEL SALATIN
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High Pathogen avian Influenza PERHAPS NO AGRICULTURAL TOPIC right now creates a sharper contrast between the “life is biology” versus “life is mechanics” philosophy than High Pathogen Avian Influenza (HPAI). In less than a year, the United States has exterminated more than 58 million chickens, turkeys, and ducks by government mandate. For the uninitiated, realize that if one bird in a million on a farm tests positive for HPAI, every bird on that property must be exterminated. The industry uses the term euthanized, but that is not the right word. Euthanizing is what you do to a suffering pet that has no hope of recovery. It’s an end-of-suffering kind of thing. Most of the birds being killed due to HPAI are neither sick nor showing symptoms of being sick; they just happen to be in proximity to sick birds and get caught up in the melee. To be sure, HPAI is a real thing and does kill birds. But just like covid, which is also a real thing, proper responses
photos by Millpond Photography
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