Well, score one more point toward idiotic bureaucracy and over-the-top paranoia. H1N1, formerly known as swine flu is nothing to sneeze about. Sure, you'll find nurses and doctors all over the place trying to assure their patients that the media is creating a mountain out of a mole hill but, the reality is that it is scary.
Still, very few people function well in panic mode and that is what we have here. Full blown panic mode. To be a little more clear on the topic it's panic mode coupled with greed and the fear of not being able to put a turkey on the table for next Thanksgiving. In response to fear of domestic stock being adversely affected by avian flu, "The Turkey Farmers of Ontario – an industry marketing board of 192 Ontario producers who control nearly half of Canada’s annual quota production – introduced a rule last year that forces all quota holders to confine turkeys indoors, under a solid roof." [1]
The crazy thing is that in order to keep these turkey's from getting sick through the means used to prevent them from getting sick (yes, I get dizzy reading that, too) the farmers are forced to feed them all sorts of drugs. It is quickly becoming a little known fact that any living creature is stronger when it is permitted to go outside and get proper exercise. By confining them indoors, they are actually making the birds sick. To offset this, they are shooting them up with antibiotics, which assists the proliferation of drug resistant organisms.
In a nut shell, the more people attempt to control nature, the more we all stand to lose. But, as chair of the board, Ingrid DeVisser, said: "We are doing what we can to protect the industry."[2] Who cares how this will affect humanity as a whole?
You don't have to eat turkey to be affected by it. You just have to live on the same planet as a large group of people that will continue to buy and consume meat infused with antibiotics and growth hormones. Nobody knows why so many people are dying of cancer and early onset of puberty is become so prevalent. But, boy do we all love our turkeys.
As put so eloquently in the Toronto Star, next year it will be easier to purchase crack cocaine on the street than to buy an organic bird. The only way to fight this madness is to make a statement comprised of dollars and cents. If the driving force is to protect their industry, perhaps human revolt against being drugged into drug resistance would be enough of a threat for them to back down from this lunacy.
The trouble is that most people are just too short sighted to see the forest through the trees. For too many people this is not a fight worth waging, and that's too bad. For all of us.
