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Bird flu news is bad for everyone

You hope nothing more serious than the lesser strains of bird flu hit the United States. That's the deep, honest version if you are a red meat producer. The types that afflicted the poultry industry last year were enough to suffice. The industry had to kill millions of birds just to keep diseases from spreading. And killing good chickens helps beef and pork.

But on Wednesday, China reported its first human cases of bird flu on the mainland, including at least one fatality.

With those pre-emptive measures, who needs flu? I recently conducted an informal poll of birds and found that 82 percent would prefer going out prematurely to avoid the agony of flu prior to death.

A recent poll showed that 88 percent of Americans hadn't yet reduced their chicken intake because of the prospect of avian flu, which hasn't even hit here yet.

Another poll said 44 percent of Americans believe that one can contract the flu from eating infected birds, despite what science says --- that cooking chicken meat readily kills any and all of the flu germs. You know Americans and science. If we believe it, it's so, by Darwin. And the facts be damned until proved otherwise six times inside a chalk circle 15 inches in diameter during full moon one minute before midnight while sprinkling stump water.

If you're a feed grain producer, a poultry company, a contract bird grower, an egg man, an egg eater, a well wisher, a good person, a chicken house propane dealer, a chicken litter end user and even a chicken eater, you don't wish bird flu of any kind or degree or type on the industry, and you surely hope that dead birds would be deemed OK for marketing instead of the ... what do they do with millions of dead chickens?

Anyway, how many bad puns and chicken jokes can one produce or endure on a good day? Flu the coop. Employees must wash hands after eating chicken. Chicken flu contest. Bird droppings new windshield hazard. Birds of a feather flu together.

Seriously, by all accounts the industry in America has a tight ship and a tight chicken house.

With lesser flu strains hitting last year and before, the bird health people and the operators reportedly have in place a great system of checks with which to stop an epidemic among birds.

As for the part about avian flu being able to transform itself into being able to jump from chicken to person to person to person, officials aren't so sure yet. Plus, heat really does kill the new virus.

Most birds are processed in this country by machines. Also, most birds that enter the food chain are closely monitored.

Some range and live bird markets are sore points for biosecurity officials. I wouldn't crow or cackle if bird flu hits. It will be bad on all in agriculture. Feed grain prices are already too low. I like eggs. I know good people who eat chicken once in a while. I think some are even related. They don't know I know they eat poultry, but I let it go because I love them.

But if bird flu does come, it wouldn't be all bad if it reduced the flocks of wild turkeys, cowbirds, starlings, crackles, and blackbirds and left other species like quail and fighting, I mean, prairie chickens alone.

I said, reduced, not eradicated. Don't get your feathers ruffled.

Jim Suber is a former staff writer for The Topeka Capital- Journal. He is an independent regional columnist who writes about rural life and agricultural issues.