10,000 Birds

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 are some very scared people out there in the real world hanging on every word.

Sadly, though, many from the esteemed ranks of the media seem to have been not only looking elsewhere as ‘events have unfolded’, they don’t even seem to have been looking in the right direction in the first place. The reporting of an outbreak of ‘Bird Flu’ in Turkey over the last week proves the point. As always the reporting has been hysterical and has needed to be re-written on a daily basis: here’s how things have gone so far -

• Almost three weeks ago reports began to circulate between members of a serious and thoughtful group called “AIwatch” that members of a family in Northern Turkey had perhaps contracted the H5N1 virus - the reports strongly suggested that the initial infection was in local poultry.
• A few days later headlines began appearing in national newspapers that the “Deadly Bird Flu has reached Europe”. The usual pundits were wheeled out to tell us that this was surely the start of the pandemic they’d long been expecting.
• Sadly, two members of a Turkish family died from H5N1. The media went into a frenzy, sending packs of reporters to film the father of the girls who died. Understandably the father was in shock (as any father would be, myself included of course):I took my girls to hospital where they should have been looked after, he said, now they are dead. How could this have happened?
• How could this have happened? Most of the media knew: it was migratory birds, it was a pandemic, it’s the end of the world as we know it, they reported. Europe held its breath and the debate caught fire. A few more steady voices though, reported that perhaps the virus was in the local poultry instead, and that there was no indication so far that the virus was being spread from human to human…
• A day or two later news began to circulate that the children who had died had been playing with the “heads of dead chickens” before they died. Reporters sent to the area found conditions where humans and chickens almost literally rubbed noses and slept together, that local children were still playing with sick chickens (which were “now easier to catch”), and that while some families were desperate to get rid of their poultry others were hiding them or moving them on before the predicted cull began…
• As the virus took hold and more people were reported to be exhibiting “flu-like” symptoms (in an impoverished country in the grip of winter remember), the world’s media somehow ratcheted up the rhetoric even further. ‘Experts’ on the television and radio told us how likely it was now that the virus would spread across Europe, and a mish-mash of statements blaming the spread on everything from migratory geese, Turkish pilgrims crossing into Iran, tourists, truck-drivers - anything other than people smuggling infected poultry in fact - were released…
• By yesterday, the response from the Turkish authorities was underway, and hideous scenes of men in bio-hazard suits bundling live birds into sacks and dumping them into trenches filled the airwaves. A few sensitive souls turned away, but the general consensus seemed to be that with such a deadly disease sweeping the planet “slaughtering” a few birds was no problem. We need to be protected…
• We need to be protected? Today the calm and reasoned voices are drowned out by a wave of “Bird Flu” stories washing over us like a tsunami. Sensationalism has again replaced thoughtfulness, humanity has again been replaced by the inhumane, everyone but us are once again to blame. Birds are nothing but a disposable commodity. All perspective is lost.

There’s no doubt that H5N1 is dangerous, there’s no doubt we should be concerned, but let’s be realistic here: the facts, to quote from a report on BBC 24 I’ve just listened to, is that in three weeks of “spread and infection”…”A number of people have tested positive for the potentially-lethal strain of Bird Flu bringing the total to 15. At least 2 have died.” The same reporter then went on to tell us how “the cold weather” had “killed over 230 people (many of them homeless) in south Asia…”, and how in northern Pakistan “200 people have been killed in tribal unrest in Balochistan”. Etc etc…

I’m not for one moment suggesting that the death of two little girls in Turkey is insignificant - if it were my daughter lying dead I’d be heartbroken, but I’m also sure I’d not be retracting a word I’ve written on Poultry Flu over the last twelve months. The facts would still be the same: this is a disease of domestic birds, and is spreading because of the way we keep them, and treat them like a form of currency rather than a living creature.

There will be people, birders amongst them, shaking their heads right now and saying, “Charlie, lighten up, they’re just chickens…”. I know because I’ve had it said to me. And I find that very worrying.

Just suppose for a moment that those men in the bio-hazard suits hadn’t been killing just chickens but sparrows and starlings as well - how would we feel then? What if the mis-reporting and hysteria really takes hold and they begin “slaughtering” the wild ducks and geese on Turkey’s lakes? What if we wake up in a few weeks or months and the television is showing culls of wild birds taking place on our local patch? On estuaries and lakes across the country we live in? In our nature reserves?

Would it matter then that we are - right now - throwing live birds into lime-filled pits I wonder…