One can almost understand how pharaoh might have felt as God sent plagues of locusts, frogs, darkness and more upon Egypt.
Of course, things are not that bad, but seemingly daily news items of fertilizer shortages, transportation and fuel issues, food processing plant fires, continued concern about COVID and talk of the unmentionable — nuclear war — make one say: What is going on?
Now you can add one more “plague” to the list: bird flu. It’s killing millions of chickens, turkeys and ducks and is raising food prices, according to CNBC.
Over the weekend, Oklahoma became the 31st state to confirm avian flu in chickens, State Impact, the Oklahoma consortium of public radio stations, reported. Also over the weekend, 19,000 ducks on seven farms in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania had to be killed in hopes of containing the disease, WGAL said.
As of Monday, 35 million birds in the U.S were reported to have died or been killed due to the flu, the second-worst spread of the disease in history, Reuters reported. France has culled 16 million birds and the disease has also occurred in Britain, Italy and Spain.
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Affected birds were in both commercial flocks and non-commercial backyard flocks.
Big commercial chicken farmers may have an advantage, since they have in place bio-security measures, according to Dr. Alicia Gorczyca-Southerland, assistant Oklahoma state veterinarian, State Impact said.
She recommended keeping poultry indoors or in coops and keeping them away from waterways to avoid transmission from ducks.
U.S. and European commercial growers of organic and free-range chickens have been keeping their birds indoors. That’s caused problems for consumers paying extra for designations of birds being free-range, according to Reuters.
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Since November, France has required farmers to keep chickens indoors; the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends the practice, but does not require it.
A major U.S. producer of free-range chickens and eggs, Pete and Gerry’s, is keeping its birds indoors. “We will be constantly evaluating the exposure risk and will have…
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