Last month, Mike Weber got the news every poultry farmer fears: His chickens tested positive for avian flu.
Following government rules, Weber’s company, Sunrise Farms, had to slaughter its entire flock of egg-laying hens — 550,000 birds — to prevent the disease from infecting other farms in Sonoma County north of San Francisco.
“It’s a trauma. We’re all going through grief as a result of it,” said Weber, standing in an empty hen house. “Petaluma is known as the Egg Basket of the World. It’s devastating to see that egg basket go up in flames.”
A year after the bird flu led to record egg prices and widespread shortages, the disease known as highly pathogenic avian influenza is wreaking havoc in California, which escaped the earlier wave of outbreaks that devastated poultry farms in the Midwest.
Hear me out, maybe there shouldn’t be half a million birds in a single flock
Seems like he put all his eggs in one basket
He really counted his chickens before they hatched
But how do people eat their chicky nuggies?
Good thing they lied about the avian flu for 5 years and artificially raised costs for no reasons and took a bunch of profits from the pockets of struggling people so they’d be ready for when the actual avian flu hit.
So this is gonna be an annual thing now?
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“It’s a trauma. We’re all going through grief as a result of it,” said Weber, standing in an empty hen house.
It’s much better when it’s filled with cries of unimaginable horror.
We probably should just switch to mung beans before these industries cultivate a bird flu pandemic.
Very nutritious, but they smell like death.
Yeah and the mung beans too
… yeah, we gotta make a good smelling cultivar of mung beans somehow. But! They’re fine once processed and cooked, so it’s not so bad.
Geee who would have seen this coming /s
We’re all going through grief as a result of [the chickens having to be slaughtered?]
Maybe don’t raise animals for slaughter if you don’t want to slaughter them idk?
just another reason to be vegan, the next pandemic will almost certainly arise from these wholly unnatural conditions.
