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by VincentEvans 482 days ago
Throughout entire human and chicken collective history we somehow haven’t managed to get wiped out by chicken transmitted decease - and suddenly its practically imminent and only massive mega farms can keeps us safe.

A thought occurs - perhaps it’s the mega farming that is the root of this problem and having some backyard chickens won’t really move the needle any closer to doom?
2 comments
philipov 482 days ago
What has changed is the population density of humans. Disease outbreaks aren't at thing you can understand by summing all the disease vectors.

There is no needle - it only takes one case. While a megafarm may be a bigger vector, it can be quarantined, whereas everyone having backyard farms can not.

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rubidium 482 days ago
Major diseases have been a part of human history throughout. There is no evidence that mega farming is making it worse.
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spdgg 482 days ago
Farming changed radically after the 1950s, so pretty recently. It's pretty reasonable to believe it will. If you've been anywhere near mega livestock operations of any kind then you would know.
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episteme 482 days ago
Why?
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xolox 471 days ago
Well certainly antibiotics resistance (MRSA [1]) is a problem exacerbated by intense farming practices [2]. To the best of my knowledge there are two big sources of MRSA: Hospitals and livestock farming (the latter of which actually got its own acronym LA-MRSA as in livestock associated MRSA).

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to directly compare the development of bacterial antibiotics resistance with the adaptation of viruses to be able to infect other kinds of hosts. Surely these disease vectors follow different developments.

It wouldn't surprise me though if intensive animal farming [3] has the capacity to exacerbate these problems, if only based on the high concentration of animals kept together and the generally poor health of these animals (poorly functioning immune systems, which is the whole reason for the overuse of antibiotics).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_animal_farming

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