‘Don’t kill the survivors’: Why killing chickens won’t stop the bird flu
Highly pathogenic avian influenza has spread to all 50 states, and the number of commercial birds that have died — or have been killed under the Biden administration — is over 166 million.
This is not only driving up the price of eggs but destroying the ability for chickens to adapt.
Self-described "Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer” Joel Salatin believes the government is handling this situation the opposite of how it should be.
“All of life is adapting, trying to adapt to new attacks that are coming, mutations, and trying to survive,” he tells BlazeTV host James Poulos on “Zero Hour,” adding, “We could talk about that in regard to bird flu.”
“Here we are in this big bird flu thing, 166 million chickens killed in the last 24 months, and probably only one or two million were actually sick,” he continues. “All the rest of them were fine. But we have this eradication idea that if one in a hundred thousand is sick, we kill all, we sterilize everything.”
But when you sterilize the world, animals as well as humans won’t be equipped to handle new strains of viruses as well as they could.
“And so the virus is trying to adapt, to become more virulent, more deadly, if you will,” Salatin explains. “And so the chickens that either don’t get it or got it and got over it, and they're many that do, to kill them, we deny chickens the chance for the most vibrant, virulent, immunological ones to adapt, to give us progeny, that is now keeping up with the virus.”
“If your immune system never gets a chance to work, then it’s not an immune system,” Poulos chimes in.
“This extermination policy is just insanity,” Salatin agrees, adding, “When you have a disease, you don’t kill the survivors.”
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