Chickens come home to roost

Above: The way it is on small human-scale operations, as here at Vermont’s Agricola farm. Below: The way it was for millennia, as here in rural India.

Avian influenza is the latest wave in a tsunami of chickens coming home to roost—this time literally. It comes in the form of H5N1, a deadly, easily spread viral infection that is devastating wild, domesticated, and industrial birds around the world. The scale of the epidemic is directly related to the proliferation of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO)—just one of which can hold more than 125,000 tightly packed chickens.

The consequences of this industrial agriculture are replicating on a diet of greed, stupidity, and entitlement. But some actors fare better than others.

When the bird flu virus is detected at a CAFO, the multi-billion dollar corporations that own them (including Perdue, Cargill, Tyson, and Hormel) solve the problem by turning up the heat until the birds die.

Since February 2022, poultry manufacturers (surely, they should longer be called farmers) have “culled”—aka cooked alive or otherwise killed—82 million exposed birds … and in the process they have reaped a half billion dollars in functioally unconditioned tax-payer funded compensation. It is such a blatant circle of capitalist virtue, that the New York Times was uncharacteristically unnuanced in its condemnation:

“By compensating commercial farmers for their losses with no strings attached, the federal government is encouraging poultry growers to continue the very practices that heighten the risk of contagion, increasing the need for future cullings and compensation.”

Andrew deCoriolis, executive director of Farm Forward, called these payouts:

“crazy-making and dangerous. Not only are we wasting taxpayer money on profitable companies for a problem they created, but we’re not giving them any incentive to make changes.”

Thanks for hanging in with Opposable / Photography and Stories! Please subscribe. It’s free and not always so grim.