Bird flu is surging again on poultry farms. The US is normalizing the cruelest mass killing method to stop it – By Marina Bolotnikova (VOX) / Dec 13, 2023
The 2022-2023 spread of bird flu has been the most catastrophic on record in the US. In less than two years, it’s hit hundreds of poultry factory farms across nearly every state in the country, costing the federal government $757 million and counting to manage, and the poultry industry more than $1 billion in lost revenue and other costs (experts also fear that the disease could spark an outbreak in humans). To help stamp out the disease’s spread, all of the more than 72 million chickens, turkeys, and other birds raised for meat and eggs on affected farms have been killed and disposed of, whether or not they actually had the virus, which can spread rapidly and has a very high mortality rate for poultry birds.
This fall, bird flu is surging again. Since October, it has infected dozens of factory farms largely in the Midwest, resulting in the extermination of more than 13.7 million chickens and turkeys in less than two and a half months.
I use the word “extermination” deliberately. Although many outlets have written that the birds on farms hit with bird flu are being “euthanized,” the reality of these mass killings is far from the painless end implied by that term.
Last year, I wrote a great deal about the rise of “ventilation shutdown plus” (VSD+), a method being used to mass kill poultry birds on factory farms by sealing off the airflow inside barns and pumping in extreme heat using industrial-scale heaters, so that the animals die of heatstroke over the course of hours. It is one of the worst forms of cruelty being inflicted on animals in the US food system — the equivalent of roasting animals to death — and it’s been used to kill tens of millions of poultry birds during the current avian flu outbreak.
CONTINUE > https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23963820/bird-flu-surge-us-ventilation-shutdown-veterinarians
