Be careful what you wish for…

It’s funny how things can turn out. Last week I wanted to write about chickens, and unfortunately, I ran out of space. Although a little sad, I knew that sooner or later the topic of chickens would come around again. Little did I think it would be so soon! Long-time readers of this blog will know I have a passion for all things ‘chicken’. I have often boasted that I have the largest chicken collection in the world, with some 6,000+ chicken artifacts filling our house. I don’t know if my claim is true or not these days, but I like to think so.

The one thing I don’t do with chickens is eat them. I’m a long standing vegetarian of well over 50 years. Back in the time of my childhood, in the middle of the 1950s, chicken was eaten as treat. Astoundingly, back then people in this country ate less than 2lbs of chicken in a whole year. It was a treat. These days, on average, non-vegetarians eat a staggering 55lbs of chicken in a year (or over 4 lbs a month). That is a lot of chicken. Unfortunately for the chickens, over 70% of the chickens that get raised for meat do so in intensive, industrial farming systems. They are bred to reach their slaughter weight between six and eight weeks. They will never see the daylight, or scratch and forage outside. In more natural conditions, chickens can live up to six years, although they may stop laying eggs every day before then.

The cost of chicken meat has risen over the past two years, but more so in the last few months. The price of eggs too. Equally, there have been shortages of both. There are well known reasons for these costs and shortages – see here – but it is the consequences of the H5N1 virus - bird flu - that has caused the most problems. It is a highly contagious disease and there have been national restrictions regarding the keeping of all poultry that have caused challenges for both the large industrial farms and backyard farmers like us. 

Our chickens have been kept indoors complete with a large aviary for them to run about in since the summer of 2022. They don’t like it, the goats don’t like it, and we certainly miss seeing them roaming around free.

We had to let our ducks go as it’s almost impossible and certainly unkind to try and confine ducks indoors, even with an outdoor aviary. The restrictions have also meant that large numbers of birds have been culled, both here and across the world. Up to the beginning of February this year, 15 million domestic birds (including chickens and ducks) have died from bird flu, while 193 million more birds have been culled. Cases have been found across the whole of the UK.

In the past, bird flu has not been thought to be dangerous to humans. Only 860 cases of people diagnosed with bird flu have been reported to the World Health Organization. That said, 56% of people infected died as a result of the disease. In the UK, the aptly named Andrew Gosling was one of the fortunate ones. He caught the virus in early 2022 after his ducks, (some of which lived in his house!) became infected. He survived.

The prompt for writing this blog however was the death of an 11 year old girl last Wednesday in Cambodia. She became ill on the 16th Feb and was finally diagnosed as being infected by the H5N1 virus on the 22nd, dying shortly after receiving the diagnosis. There are no effective treatments for humans infected with bird flu, let alone the H5N1 virus strain. Cambodia has reported 56 cases of H5N1 infections in people since 2014, 37 of which were fatal.

As I write this blog it is unclear if the girl had any interactions with birds who may have been carrying the virus. The alarming aspect to the story is that a further dozen people living in the same area as the girl are suspected of being infected with the H5N1 virus, and have been tested. Four of this group are symptomatic. This raises the awful prospect that the virus may be spreading from human to human.

Learning the lessons from the Covid19 pandemic, officials at the UK Human Security Agency (UKHSA) are currently modelling how a worst case scenario of a bird flu outbreak in humans might be addressed. One of the people working on this modelling is the epidemiologist, Professor Neil Ferguson. His modelling of the Covid outbreak led to the UK Government imposing the first lockdown. Following on from the experiences of Covid19, this worst case scenario is almost too difficult to contemplate.  The UKHSA have released their estimations of what a ‘mild scenario’ might involve. They calculate that one in 400 people who caught bird flu would die due to the virus. In the case of a more severe scenario, the rate could rise to one in 40 cases. Unlike the Covid pandemic however, a bird flu outbreak could put more young people at a higher risk of death than the elderly.

However, before we all get too gloomy and worried, the UKHSA have noted that there is ‘no evidence so far that the virus is getting better at infecting humans or other mammals’ and data suggests that H5N1 ‘does not pass easily to people’. I really hope they are right. The Covid pandemic undoubtedly raised the world’s level of awareness of the need to prepare for such disease outbreaks. As for me, I’m going to be careful what I wish for when it comes to writing my blog in the future. Whilst we can’t seem to get many vegetables at present (even turnips have mysteriously sold out), I have yet to hear of a pandemic that has been caused by plant-based products.