Wave of Avian bird flu

Wave of Avian bird flu: Another wave of bird flu seems to be coming soon. And this time it’s affecting Bangladesh, India and Nepal, the area where the three countries border each other.

India’s Situation: A few districts of eastern state of West Bengal, India, have been hit by the virus. More than 100,000 bird deaths have been reported and the authority is sorting to killing million chickens and ducks as a means to stop the widespread of the deadly virus. Dead birds are being illegally sold and it’s believed that locals, especially the poor, are “feasting” on cheap chicken available on the open market. Five people in West Bengal have been quarantined with clinical symptoms of avian flu – including fever, coughing, sore throat and muscle ache – after handling affected poultry.

Nepal’s reaction: Nepal, which has banned poultry imports from India since 2006, said its border posts were on high alert.

How the virus spreads? People typically catch the disease by coming into direct contact with infected poultry, but experts fear a flu pandemic if the H5N1 virus mutates into a form easily transmissible between humans. Migratory birds have been largely blamed for the global spread of the disease, which has killed more than 200 people worldwide since 2003.

My view: thinking about it, one way to reduce the magnitude of the disaster is to reduce the consumption of chickens and ducks raised for human consumption. The idea is simple: The less people eating chickens and ducks, the less demand for them, and thus less economical initiative to raise them, and thus less number of poultry in total. And if outbreak does occur, less poultry as well as human beings will be infected and therefore the situation won’t be so devastated.

Going vegetarian seems to make sense here.