And today’s big “news” is…?

Having thought this all long I ought to be gaining some kind of grim satisfaction at the following - taken from AOL’s UK website this morning about 11:30am - but what satisfaction is there to be taken in a) the poultry industry shooting itself in the foot again, but causing huge [...]

Our media here is full of the news that there has been a confirmed outbreak of a strain of H5N1 ‘avian flu’ on a Bernard Matthews turkey “farm” - a rural-sounding word for rows of sealed sheds where the birds live until they are killed for sandwich filler - in Holton, near Halesworth, Suffolk.
Over 2600 [...]

The UN has been holding discussions on H5N1 poultry flu (or avian flu as some would have it) in China, and have announced that - as Nial Moores and Martin Williams were saying months ago - migratory birds are not the main causes of transmission: it’s our demand for poultry and the appalling way we [...]

An article printed yesterday in the New York Times (hardly a ‘pro-environment lefty rag’ in case anyone wants to throw that particular argument around) seems to be the nail in the coffin for all the hysterical doom-sayers around the globe who managed to get an uninformed public looking over their shoulder in case a [...]

Remember the avian flu ‘outbreak’ in Suffolk in early February this year? The outbreak took place around February 2nd/3rd in a sealed unit on one of giant food-processing company Bernard Matthews’ (BM) turkey farms. The snapping of knee-jerks began to be heard across the media, and as usual migratory birds were blamed for the [...]

‘Bird Flu’ - Britain under attack…
(On April 05 2005 a dead swan that had washed up on a beach in eastern Scotland was confirmed as showing antibodies for H5N1. The corpse - which was headless and wouldn’t be specifically identified for another week - had evidently been in the sea for many days. The next [...]

09 April 2006
Poultry Flu - UK government’s chief scientific adviser says, Risk of human flu outbreak ‘low’
 
Article adapted from BBC News Online (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4893366.stm)
Published: 09 April 2006

The chances of bird flu virus mutating into a form that spreads between humans are “very low”, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser has said.

Speaking on ITV1’s Jonathan Dimbleby [...]

(Thanks to Katie at the wonderful Bogbumper for inspiring this post).

There is an advert on TV here in the UK for a brand of photocopier which has a manager of a small business walking into an office in which a cat is sat in front of an easel supposedly adding daubs of paint to a [...]

The federal government just announced its strategic, five-point plan to detect the invasion of H5N1 avian influenza on American soil, first and foremost our westernmost regions of Alaska, the Pacific Flyway, and Pacific Islands.  The multi-pronged surveillance for early detection of the virus in migratory birds (the USDA is supposed to identify and monitor domestic [...]

Rather surprisingly researchers investigating H5N1 have discovered a new bird species: it has never been seen and no-one knows quite where to look for it, but 10,000 Birds has exclusively obtained an email that has some details of the remarkable discovery…
 

“…In Europe too people have discovered the species that Martin [Williams, a researcher based [...]

Tamiflu (the trade name for oseltamivir) has been touted as THE answer to fight any pandemic that may arise from a mutation of the H5N1 virus and vast stocks have been bought by western governments. Why has it been so touted and who by? These are relevant questions when you consider the fact that a) [...]

From the highly respected journal Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7080/full/440006a.html):

“With avian flu spreading around the world at a frightening rate, scientists are welcoming an international proposal for state-of-the-art labs to monitor emerging diseases in developing countries. But they add that the bird-flu crisis has exposed glaring deficiencies that demand a radical rethink of the world’s [...]

Is it any co-incidence that as the H5N1 virus spreads west threatening the livelihoods of rich people that matter rather than those of a bunch of poor people in hot countries somewhere a long way from Europe or the US that don’t, at long, long last some proper effort is being made by the western [...]

It’s been a long time coming, but finally the EU, the FAO, Governments everywhere in fact are admitting that the flu caused by the H5N1 virus is an endemic disease of the poultry industry - just as (ahem) a growing number of us have been saying for many months. Despite some truly lousy reporting in [...]

So how’s the media doing in it’s coverage of the “pandemic that will kill millions” aka Avian Flu?

Sadly, the reporting of the spread of the H5N1 virus continues to be inaccurate, parochial, and anthropocentric - and remarkably contrasting.

The UK press used to have some sort of reputation for accuracy and common-sense reporting, but cultural differences [...]

H5N1 - the virus causing Poultry Flu (or Bird Flu) - is continuing its spread around the globe, and now looks set to become entrenched in Europe. Despite what reports in the media constantly suggest, migratory birds are still not proven to be important vectors in the spread: at the root of most infections - [...]

1. Given a) the massive fears over poultry flu in the US, and b) the sky-high cost of oil used in transport, does the following news item really make sense to anyone at all? Answers by email please…

From //www.meatnews.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Article&artNum=11012

U.S. MAY IMPORT CHICKEN FROM CHINA

UNITED STATES/CHINA: USDA may clear processing plants in China to export poultry [...]

(What follows is a personal and individual opinion and is not to be considered representative of any other individuals or organisations. It should be read in an angry and fed-up tone though…)

This month the respected journal “New Scientist” published an inflammatory article looking at the genesis and the pattern of outbreaks of the ‘Avian Flu’ [...]

I get very little feedback on my views about Poultry Flu (or “Bird Flu” as people will insist on calling it).

I don’t know whether anyone agrees with my assertions that people across Europe and Asia are now so far removed from wildlife that they view birds with suspicion and fear rather than affection and [...]

Any broadcast journalist reporting the H5N1 virus - responsible for so-called ‘Bird Flu’ - needs to keep their eyes locked on what they love to call ‘unfolding events’ in case they miss something. Heaven forbid that they should report a half-truth, or broadcast a ‘fact’ that might instead turn out to be ’supposition’ - there [...]