Bird flu could be the trigger for mass slaughter of cow herds
Are we heading for mass culls of dairy herds?
Here’s a headline from the Associated Press this week: “With 100M birds dead, poultry industry could serve as example as dairy farmers confront bird flu.”
And here’s the first paragraph: “As the U.S. dairy industry confronts a bird flu outbreak, with cases reported at dozens of farms and the disease spreading to people, the egg industry could serve as an example of how to slow the disease but also shows how difficult it can be to eradicate the virus.”
What do you think? I know what I think.
Since the current outbreak of bird flu in the US began in February, 100 million chickens and turkeys have been slaughtered. That’s roughly one bird for every three people in the entire country. This is slaughter on an industrial scale. A hundred Passchendales.
And while it appears to have slowed the spread of the disease, it hasn’t stopped it. Cases are still being detected, and more birds will, undoubtedly, be killed.
Such an approach comes at a huge cost for consumers, who are forced to pay more for eggs because of artificial scarcity and inflation. Last year, I wrote for The Epoch Timesabout the egg situation, and noted the emergence of a thriving black market for eggs brought into the US from Mexico.
“Is it any wonder,” I wrote, “with prices so much lower in Juárez, Mexico, that enterprising Mexicans might risk a hefty fine to resell a few boxes in Texas for a tasty profit? The real question is whether the cartels, which have long been in the business of diversification, will soon muscle in on the action. Chances are they will.”
Food-price inflation was also made yet worse by a serious of mysterious fires at facilities across the US—still unexplained—including a fire at a Hillandale Farms chicken facility in Connecticut that claimed the lives of more than 100,000 laying hens. While figures like Tucker Carlson and, of course, Alex Jones tried to draw attention to the possibility of deliberate sabotage of the food supply, the mainstream media and the US government simply ignored it.
And, just to make the situation even worse, there was also price gouging by egg producers.
But the costs of such measures and misfortunes extend well beyond the financial. Even at the best of times, most consumers remain blissfully unaware of the conditions under which the foods they eat, especially animal products, are produced. Out of sight, out of mind. And as consumers tighten their belts and have to weigh every single purchase they make and the possibility their loved ones might have to go without, an even harder attitude descends. Animal welfare simply ceases to be a consideration.
We should remember, nonetheless, that the culls and mysterious fires have claimed the lives of sentient creatures, and that those sentient creatures were only in that position of being culled or burnt to a crisp in such Biblical numbers for one reason alone: because we force them into totally unnatural conditions simply to satisfy our desire for cheap eggs and chicken tenders. Diseases like bird flu would not be a problem if we produced food a different way, if we didn’t force tens and even hundreds of thousands of animals into vast concentration camps we have the temerity to label “farms.”
But that’s an issue for another day.
For now, let’s talk about dairy herds. Although the Associated Press notes that cattle are unlikely to be culled because the disease doesn’t affect them in the same way as chickens—bird flu is generally not fatal in short order to cows—things could quickly change.
Deborah Birx, whom you may remember from the COVID-19 pandemic, has already suggested that we need mass PCR-testing of herds right now, and this is only likely to do one thing: to inflate, hugely, the number of cases detected. This will happen exactly as it did during the pandemic, because PCR testing is notoriously inaccurate, providing large numbers of false-positive results. Even Anthony Fauci and the WHO admitted—during the pandemic—that this would happen.
If mass PCR-testing goes ahead as Birx would like, we may soon end up in a situation where, instead of dozens of cattle testing positive for bird flu, we have thousands or tens of thousands. Do you really believe the authorities won’t resort to slaughter?
Mass slaughter of cattle is far from unknown in situations of contagion. There was the foot-and-mouth crisis in the UK about 25 years ago, when the British government considered using napalm to dispose of the nearly six million cows and sheep that were killed to contain an outbreak that infected only 2,000 animals. Foot-and-mouth disease causes mild symptoms in human beings, just like bird flu.
At least at present. What if we see a new “more dangerous” variant of bird flu emerge at the same time as cases skyrocket due to PCR testing? What then?
Incidentally, mass slaughter of cattle is being proposed as a solution to the “climate crisis.” You may remember that last year the Irish government floated ideas to cull 200,000 dairy cows in the next three years, to reduce their methane emissions (read: farts). The Irish government wants to achieve a 25% cut in agricultural emissions by 2030, and there are more than seven million cattle on the Emerald Isle. So that means a lot of killing.
This is one hard reality of the “we all have to give up animal foods to save the planet” narrative that well-meaning morons with their Extinction Rebellion placards and soy-filled lunchboxes don’t understand. Livestock aren’t going to be retired gently from a life munching grass for our benefit. They’re going to be slaughtered. Millions of them, in a great orgy of killing. But don’t let me shatter your illusions.
The truth about the climate-change agenda, and the effort to get the world eating supposedly healthier “planet-friendly” plant-based diets, is that it will not be driven by consumer choice. This is now crystal clear from more than a decade of market trends and research. People don’t want to eat “plant-based meat.” They don’t want to eat “lab-grown meat.” And they certainly don’t want to eat insects, which is why advocates are now grinding them up and insinuating them into everything from protein bars to dog kibble in the hope consumers won’t notice.
A couple of years ago, a survey showed that 73% of Australian men would rather lose ten years of their lives than give up meat. People quite literally would rather die prematurely than eat this crap.
By hook or by crook, the climate-change agenda demands the public be made to give up their beloved animal foods. I don’t think there will be out-and-out bans on meat products: they would prove too divisive, and the regime must at least maintain an appearance of consent and respect for individual freedom. Instead, what we’ll get is economic pressure, artificial scarcity and climate-based legislation—carbon taxes and the like—which together will price most consumers out of regular meat consumption.
Given the choice between no burger and a plant-based burger, most people will choose the latter, even if what they actually want is the real thing.
As I noted in my book The Eggs Benedict Option, in recent years we’ve had commentators praising the role of inflation for driving “welcome change” in ordinary people’s diets. Annaliese Griffin, writing in The New York Times in 2022, noted how “historically, cost has been a powerful force that has changed Americans’ diets,” before adding that “inflation has the potential to drive welcome change for the planet if Americans think differently about the way they eat.” Nudge nudge, wink wink.
Somewhat more ominously, Griffin even praised the 1917 Lever Act, a law that was enacted upon America’s entry to World War I to allow the government to requisition food from ordinary citizens…
So yes, I think mass culls are going to happen. And I think they’ll serve a dual purpose: to make the coming bird-flu pandemic “real,” and to help drive the “welcome change” needed to reduce our consumption of planet-destroying animal products.
You really can kill two birds with one stone.
Breaking Exclusive! Tucker Carlson Breaks The Internet In Powerful Interview With Alex Jones
