-----Original Message-----
From: ...

Originally from: ... [...] Sent: 08 April 2006 14:00
To: ...
Subject: [farmtalking] Bird flu and the Pensions Crisis

I have never been particularly fond of conspiracy theories, but Defra's knack for fostering them, has even got me wondering now!...

Here's my Bizarre Conspiracy Theory (yes I know its nonesense, but on the other hand the evidence is pretty compelling!!)....

Has Defra been secretly recruited by the Treasury and Dept of Work and Pensions to solve the pensions-crisis "black hole" in the UK economy by accelerating human mortality rates?

THE COMPELLING EVIDENCE

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a) Defra advises thousands of extensive poultry keepers in Scotland to keep their 250,000 birds indoors full-time so that the people entering the buildings to deal with the birds are exposed to a greater chance of breathing-in any H5N1 virus that the birds may have acquired. Also a greater chance of breathing/touching virus that the birds might acquire via a variety of routes, given that extensive producers rarely have bird-proof housing, virus-filtered air inlets, or bird-and-cat-proof feed sources. Housing birds also ensures a good "plume" of virus-contaminated outlet air that can spread to adjacent flocks and homes on damp nights.

Influenza viruses just love over-crowded, poorly-ventilated conditions, especially where humans and birds come together and allow human and bird viruses to mix and share genetic material.

b) A prolonged period of housing raises the stress, disease and mortality rates for free-range birds and their ill-equipped-for-housing owners, who are already stress by consumer panic (see below) and loss of premium meat and egg revenues. How long will the bird flu risk remain? A year, two years? Long-term uncertaintly and poverty kills more people than short-term stress and poverty.

c) While professing to the public that there is "no need to panic", Defra sets up a 965 square mile control and surveillance zone around a single dead bird (in which the virus was long-dead) and sends people in biological protection suits to collect up any more bird "stiffs" (rigor mortis carcases with no viable virus) that you find. Meanwhile, birds from infected countries cross the channel freely to all parts of the U.K.

This kind of mixed "No need for you to panic, but we certainly are!" Defra message (familiar from the days of BSE and FMD) is far more scary than simply saying "Let's all panic!" – it's more scary because not only is there a panic on, we also have a situation where "Our Nanny" Defra is "speaking with forked tongue" and cannot be relied on for full and honest information upon which we could make our own best decisions.

d) The Defra and the government assure us that the "bird flu" situation is "under control" (as it did with BSE and FMD, so there's clearly no need to panic!) and detailed contingency plans are on hand. These assurances fly desperately in the face of world-wide experience, to date, which conclusively shows that this virus is uncontrollable in wild birds, and only controlled in domestic flocks by killing them before the virus gets to them. (This latter information guarantees more panic and re-awakened traumatic memories by anyone who remembers the contiguous cull of 2001 and the catastrophic BSE events of the 1980s).

The thing that could realistically make a big difference to our bird flu situation is a dry, warm summer – terribly bad for virus survival.

Confusion, misinformation and worry are killers, and Defra knows how to unleash them!

e) At a time when NHS staff (useful people to have around if influenza should take off in humans!) are being made redundant because of money-shortages, Defra spends money "like water" on diagnostic investigations, communication exercises and control measures that are doomed to fail in the impossible struggle against the relentless spread of this virus. Maintaining the (now traditional) slaughter-everything-that-might be-infected and the non-science-based 3 km protection and 10 km surveillance zones around continuing outbreaks could rack us up into some pretty big national bills, not to mention the direct and indirect costs to rural businesses and the food chain. Still, we can always cut more NHS staff, with a knock-on benefit to mortality rates!

Filling that black hole in the UK economy and soving the pensions/nursing-care-for-the-elderly funding crisis could be only a bird flu epidemic away!

Mike
www.sunflower-health.com

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