The Avian Plague

[Update Spring 2023. While nobody is going to admit that locking 10,000 chickens up in a building that will asphyxiate them if the fans stop running is demonically stupid, there appears to be some sign that the government is backing away from the policy of euthanizing entire flocks based on a single PCR test — mostly because enough people pointed out how obviously insane this policy is. We hope for some positive change by next year. Maybe?]

Government policy suggests insanity

We are increasing our deposit per chicken to twenty dollars in 2023. This is because of the risk from the Federal Government’s response to Avian Influenza. Avian influenza is not a meaningful health risk to people, only to birds.

Nevertheless, for some unexplained reason (no corporate funding to explain it, likely), respiratory ailments such as avian influenza are dangerous to the profit margins of agribusiness corporations running huge, confined poultry flocks. It appears to be, in practice, U.S. government policy that commercial flocks kept in such close confinement that ventilation systems are required to filter out the aerosolized chicken manure (if they have access to the outdoors some of these birds may be sold as “free range”) could not possibly be a cause of respiratory ailments in said birds. Also, it appears that farmers are being told that it is a good idea to destroy wetlands habitat and other surface water sources on their farms to ensure the farm ecology is not shared with wild birds.

They don’t make insane, dictatorial bureaucracies like they used to

In a disappointingly weak and lackluster attempt to copy the illustrious Mao Zhuxi who, unlike the clownish erasthaipaeds in charge of the U.S. government*, had the knack of putting the “total” into “itarian”, the government (and big ag) blames wild birds for spreading avian influenza, and is particularly concerned that wild birds might breathe the same fresh, open air as domesticated poultry flocks. Fresh air is dangerous! To big ag profits?  

This story is not reminiscent of anything

To determine if a poultry flock is infected with the dreaded avian plague, the government uses a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which has become the go-to test to detect something that isn’t there, since the PCR test, on its own, has always been and will always be invalid as a tool for diagnosis of any kind and was never intended for such a purpose, as stated explicitly by the man awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of said test.  But if you’re wondering why you aren’t seeing flocks of wild geese dropping out of the sky with the sniffles, but almost all poultry lost from “avian influenza” have been part of huge commercial CAFO flocks, you’re clearly a misinformation spreader, so stop asking such questions and be thankful that you live in a free country.

(There are occasional media reports of nameless “hunters” seeing unexplained dead wild birds. A flock of more than 50 wild turkeys mate and nest on the farm and the surrounding area and hundreds of wild geese and ducks come to the farm every year. If there were anything at all to see, we would know.)

Following any positive test result, regardless of how apparently specious, the typical government response is to immediately destroy all birds in the flock, similar to the typical government response to children in Yemen, wedding parties in Iraq, or democratically-elected leaders in Africa or South America. Note that even if the entire flock were to be infected, the birds could be quarantined, processed, cooked, and eaten in complete safety, if the purpose of government policy was to benefit the public, but this is not allowed. 

Why we’re raising our deposit on chickens

Unlike the corporate CAFO factory farms and their absentee investor owners, we can’t afford to cover the loss of an entire flock of poultry so that we can profit by raising the price on you next time while driving our smaller competitors out of business. Thus, we have increased the deposit amount on bulk chicken pre-orders, which is not refundable in the event we have chickens but are prevented by law or regulatory action from selling them to you.

Do you believe drug companies care about people over profits?

The good news is that while “leaky” avian influenza vaccines have been largely banned in the U.S. and Europe due to the risks and side effects of the vaccines being deemed worse than the disease, international veterinary pharmaceutical conglomerates have for years selflessly pawned off these potentially dangerous vaccines onto politically and economically disadvantaged farmers in the “global South”, and are ready to charitably sell their vaccines in the affluent U.S. and European markets just as soon as government policy creates a sufficient demand.

Let’s Recapitulate

Avian influenza is not significantly harmful to humans but is potentially detrimental to debt-leveraged corporate agriculture confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) poultry business profits. In contrast, healthy birds raised outdoors appear to be less susceptible to the disease. Also, decentralized and distributed small scale outdoor flocks are logically more likely to experience a self-contained outbreak in contrast with huge confined flocks which are served by delivery trucks and machinery going between multiple buildings every day and thus spreading potentially contaminated litter. However, the U.S. government blames migratory wild birds for spreading avian flu, not Big Chicken warehouses full of aerosolized manure and the industrial supply chains which serve them. The solution promoted by the U.S. government is to destroy any chicken flock in which avian influenza is suspected, regardless of how many birds actually have symptoms, and to promote CAFO poultry as the safest way of raising chickens. The net result is the deliberate destruction of small, less capitalized poultry farms and thus decreased competition for the major corporations which fund agribusiness lobbying. As a (very) small producer, we can’t afford to cover the cost of having the government come and kill all our chickens, so we’re raising our deposit per chicken.

* Of course there may be many well-meaning employees of the Government. All of our interactions with such employees have been cordial. Most Federal employees probably mean well and are trying to do the right thing. None of these people has any real power to set policy. Perhaps if the hard working government employees who actually want to do the right thing were put in charge, things would be different.

Marek's Disease and the Story of Non-Sterilizing Vaccinations

Two types of vaccine treatment

Fifty years ago Marek's caused mild paralysis in some chickens, reducing yields. This problem was solved with a vaccine. Almost all commercial chickens are now vaccinated against Marek's. Unlike the measles vaccine or the original polio vaccine, but like the flu vaccine, the avian influenza vaccine, and the vaccine which is 100 percent safe and effective after two shots, but also requires unlimited boosters, and correlates with decreased naturally immunity across all age groups and with increased danger from post-vaccination infection, and is associated with a larger incidence of extremely debilitating side effects than all other vaccinations combined, such as unexplained myocarditis in previously healthy children, and is now officially safe and effective for children despite more children dying in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated group in the abbreviated and materially inconclusive (on the record!) efficacy trial, and which occasionally causes otherwise very healthy people with no prior risk of heart disease to drop dead from massive blood clots, which were previously "misinformation" and you were a liar if you said this happened but are now classified as "rare", and which is known to cause increased concentrations of potentially dangerous toxins in the ovaries, and correlates with an increase in miscarriages and a marked decline in fertility, the Marek's vaccine is "leaky".

Non-sterilizing vaccines: what could possibly go wrong?

"Leaky" is highly technical language. It may seem, to those of us who aren’t pharmaceutical company CEOs with profitable Defense Department contracts to inject American soldiers with experimental vaccines which correlate 100 percent with debilitating chronic illness, as if it means "they're lying and this isn't a real vaccine and it doesn't work", but what "leaky" means is highly technical. The Marek's vaccine preserves chickens from the symptoms of the disease (we hope) but doesn't prevent them from becoming infected and contagious. Instead of a sterilizing vaccine which effectively wipes out the disease (as was achieved in the U.S. with the original polio vaccine), the leaky Marek's vaccine resulted in mutated strains of Marek's which are now extremely deadly, perhaps because, in the words of Harvard Medical School graduate Michael Crichton, "life finds a way" -- and the Marek's vaccine doesn't kill the Marek's virus, it just shoves it under the featherbed. This has been known for well over a decade (see, for example, Gimeno 2008 in “Vaccine”, Witter 1998 in “Poultry Science”, Boodhoo et. al. 2016 in “Veterinary Research”) which is one reason why many previously highly-respected but, now that they disagree with industry-captured government agencies and people with a journalism degree, obviously incompetent, epidemiologists and virologists have been trying to spread the misinformation that widespread use of a leaky vaccine in humans might be a bad idea. We should obviously listen to television news anchors, who can read a teleprompter, and government bureaucrats, who can sometimes, and not to the top scientists in the field, who in speaking out and thus losing very lucrative grants and contracts from the drug companies and government agencies they criticize are clearly just self-interested and don’t understand the science.

You may be wondering if leaky vaccines given to people could result in a potentially dangerous disease mutation as with Marek's in chickens. The answer to that is, of course, absolutely not -- and if it does, rest assured pharmaceutical companies will come up with new vaccines to sell. So there's nothing to be concerned about. This was just a boring history lesson and any comparison to recent events is entirely unintended.

Natural immunity? What’s that?

Of course the alternative to treating a marginally dangerous illness with widespread use of non-sterilizing, “leaky” vaccines which directly cause viral mutations that greatly increase mortality, assuming the leaky vaccines even work, is to focus instead on overall population health of the flock (such as plenty of fresh air, exercise, and a natural diet), offer extra care to those which become ill, and allow the population to develop natural immunity to the virus over time, since natural immunity to even a mild strain is apparently effective against all variants. Officially, this practice doesn’t work, however, as widespread empirical observations to the contrary don’t count as data since they don’t take place in industry-funded labs. If you think that’s clearly wrong, and that to pursue as the only possible solution a schedule of constant vaccinations which are proven to make the disease more dangerous over time is criminally insane and everyone involved in such an obviously corrupt fiasco should be locked up, you don’t know what you’re talking about and you should stop spreading misinformation.

Our meat chickens are vaccinated against Marek's. We like our local family-run hatchery, and since they have to vaccinate for the larger commercial growers, they don't have any feasible means of vaccinating only some of the eggs but not others. It's too bad farmers didn't make a better decision about using a known "leaky" vaccine fifty years ago, or about believing the pharmaceutical sales representatives and the government regulators who rubber-stamped their recommendations.

Follow “the science”

In order to be better informed, we should clearly listen to talking heads on TV. Reading actual peer-reviewed published research is foolish. Simple, common-sense solutions which don’t require expensive and potentially dangerous chemicals are obviously not the answer to any of our problems. When deciding which “experts” are most credible, we should always give credence to those who are paid the most by corporate industry, and not to those who sacrifice lucrative paychecks in order to speak out. Speaking out is best done with the tongue thrust sideways into the inside of the cheek.

See the difference! Chickens help grow pasture

New video on Youtube

We raise chickens, pigs, and sheep on pasture using rotation and holistic management to keep our animals happy and healthy and regenerating soil fertility. For more information visit us at anchorranchfarm.com

Just some video of the sheep eating grass while I ramble on.

I was thinking that our competition really comes from the big, corporate, international “so-called-organic” grocery stores. The “free range” chicken that is $4.99 a pound after being trucked across half the country, sold with million-dollar marketing campaigns, stocked on retail shelves in storefronts with million-dollar leases, with huge management staffs, expensive but individually-underpaid retail labor, high-priced corporate attorneys, well-funded lobbyists…

In other words, fakes! All that extra overhead cost and yet they manage to sell a “free range” chicken! Of course these big business chickens are not free range in any sense that small, conscientious family farms are raising chickens.

We think the more local, sustainable farms the better. Small farmers have more flexibility to adopt sustainable practices. Smaller, local stores can sometimes stock great products at reasonable prices because they buy locally instead of shipping food around the world. And shoppers who want better, sustainably-raised food have much more influence with a local farmer or a locally-run store they can actually go visit and talk to face to face.

Vegetarian diets are not sustainable

Follow the money

There is always a lot of talk in the media about meat being unsustainable. Well-promoted books and articles profess the idea that a meatless diet uses fewer resources and is more ecologically sound than more balanced alimentation.

This is all nonsense, much of it paid for by investment funds that plan to make money selling processed “vegetable” products at a substantial markup to the real cost. Nobody ought to be forced to eat meat if they don’t want to. I didn’t eat meat or fish for seven years, and our family still abstains from meat about once a week. But it’s simply false to claim that a “vegetarian” or “vegan” diet is in any way better for the environment.

“Corporate” agriculture is not sustainable

The fact is that agribusiness is irresponsibly wasteful of natural and civic resources and harmful to the environment. Most farmers care deeply about their local ecologies and the quality of food they produce, but their hands are often tied by usurious agriculture conglomerates. A vast, monocrop field of corn or soybeans contains less species diversity than a desert or an arctic tundra. The agribusiness operations that produce these crops are strip-mining invaluable soil resources and depositing toxic chemicals into local watersheds. There is nothing sustainable about a “veggie burger”. Not only are the crop inputs farmed in a manner that destroys natural resources, but after harvest they have to be processed in a factory that uses even more chemical pollutants!

“Organic” farming is no panacea, because Federal regulations allow large scale monocrop farming with hazardous chemicals to qualify for an “organic” label. What your local, small scale, beyond-organic vegetable farmer calls “organic” and what a multinational agribusiness calls “organic” really aren’t comparable, but current regulations (heavily influenced by industry lobbyists) lump together these very different practices.

It’s true that animals raised in confinement tend to be unhealthy and that feedlots and other such operations may have problems managing the vast amounts of manure they generate in far too small a space. They’re probably unsustainable. However, that waste manure does at least have fertilizer value, which is more than you can say for the remnants of a post-harvest field of glyphosate-engineered corn.

What a “sustainable diet” really means

Grass is pretty sustainable. It even grows well in places that aren’t able to grow other things like cucumbers or potatoes. In fact, grass tends to be pretty much one of the first volunteer species to grow in a patch of bare dirt. Grass roots help keep topsoil from eroding and, year after year, the grass itself adds more organic matter and fertility to the soil. Some of the most fertile soils worldwide were formed from grass decomposing year over year.

Humans can’t eat grass, but ruminant animals can. Traditional diets all over the world have often relied on animals that can eat grass. Grass grows on ground that can’t otherwise be sustainably (or even efficiently) farmed and feeds animals that provide meat and milk. Those animals, through the very process of grazing, add nutrients to the soil that help the grass to grow even more. All with 100 percent solar energy.

If you look at a herd of ruminants in nature, it’s always surrounded by a lot of birds which eat the insects that follow the herd. Chickens and other poultry can help fill this role on sustainable farms. Hogs, goats, and other foragers roam the forests and woody edges of grazing pastures, clearing weeds and brambles that if left untended would both diminish pasture forage and choke off forest growth. The animal herds and flocks move frequently, rather than exhausting any one particular area of forage. The various forages, given time to rest, use the nutrients from animal manure and regrow in time for future grazing. This is a self-sustaining, holistic system.

“Sustainable” means something that has lasted the test of time, not a fad backed by financial speculators and corporate advertisers.

For almost all of human history, people have filled most of their nutritional needs with either meat or seafood. They ate the whole animal, including cartilage, organs, fat, and broth from the bones. Fruits and vegetables were picked and eaten fresh in season, or preserved through fermentation; not shipped halfway around the world. Farmers practiced crop rotation, not just with vegetable crops but also with animals, by allowing animals to forage in a field after harvest, or by keeping a field as fallow pasture every few years, or even perhaps unintentionally through the practice of swidden farming.

There’s a common historical myth that our ancestors ate mostly bread or porridge. This kind of mathematically impossible nonsense could only be propounded by people who don’t know how to cook, or who perhaps are being paid to promote unsubstantiated conjecture as historical fact. The fact is, as anyone knows who has done some home baking, that the amount of flour in a large loaf of bread (enough to make you feel sick if you eat the whole thing) doesn’t contain enough calories to sustain an active adult for a single day. Likewise oatmeal is a common “diet food” for a reason. It is risible to suggest that meat wasn’t widely available in the past and a common part of everyone’s diet, or that people working at hard manual labor outdoors all day were subsisting on bowls of porridge. Those who were enslaved and forced to work on such a diet developed diseases of malnutrition such as pellagra and quickly died. The ubiquity of meat in normal ancestral diets is illustrated by the prominent role given to abstaining from meat for religious reasons, which in a socioreligious context only makes sense if such abstention requires a meaningful change in diet. We can also see evidence of the widespread everyday consumption of meat in pre-modern times by looking at records of army rations, which pretty much universally consisted of roughly equal amounts of bread and meat by weight. In fact, if one simply adds up the amount of meat included in published accounts of historical daily rations, it’s obvious that claims that “today we’re eating more meat than ever before” are the ravings of the historically illiterate and arithmetically retarded.

Ignore food fads and marketing gimmicks. Eat like your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents did.

Some well-financed people have been trying to sell us the idea that the kind of holistic food system that has lasted for thousands of years is “unsustainable”, that monocrop latifundia are a historically sustainable means of agriculture (rather than strongly correlating with civilizational collapse), and that we all need to stop eating meat and purchase processed textured vegetable proteins in conveniently branded packages made palatable with chemical flavorings.

These unscrupulous frauds don’t care about you, they don’t care about the environment, and they don’t care that they’re selling a lie. All they care about is their bottom line, to which your personal buying power is inconsequential.

Your local family farmer cares about you, your health, your local community, and your local environment, because your local farmer’s success depends on your continued business — and they live here, too.

The new fad is to claim that the “sustainable” meat of the future will be made from insect protein. Just like the “veggie” scam, there is a lot of well-connected financial capital going into investing in this industry. There’s certainly nothing wrong with eating insects if you enjoy doing so, but basic math and simple common sense tells us these claims are nonsense. The insect proteins these charlatans are trying to sell are made from insects raised predominantly on conventional feed mixes, often food waste products from other food production processes. (So, “garbage”.) None of these insect species are really any more efficient than a chicken at converting feed to protein; most are less so. Since none of these corporations plans to simply serve field-caught chili-fried crickets as a snack, after producing the insects using an equivalent amount of feed as any other CAFO operation, they then have to use far more resources, including powered machinery and industrial chemicals, in order to transform the insect protein into whatever form of processed mystery glop they plan to sell it as. It’s all nonsense: rather than being a viable means of regenerative, sustainable food production, this plan is full of bugs.