Cheek by Jowl with Chickens
‘On the (kitchen side) of the partition the family used to spend the whole day, or part of the day, ten of them perhaps, There was a coop against the partition with hens in it, and a broody hen just by it in an old cooking pot. At night time there would be a cow or two, calf or two, the ass, the dog on a chain by the wall or running about the house. In a house with a large family you would find a post bed, or maybe a bed on the floor. The old people used to spend the night in that beside the fire. Two or three dogs would stretch out at the foot of the bed, the cow or the calves below them, head to the wall, and there would be a calf or two with the run of the kitchen, or lying muzzle to the fire. The ass would be tied up on the other side of the house…and a cat with a couple of kittens maybe in the chimney niche… And beside all the other animals, you would find a pet lamb or two running about the house’
This intimacy with animals, recorded by Tomas O’Crohan in his book ‘The Islandman’, was not confined to the Blasket Islands. I have seen farmhouses in Iceland where flaps could be opened to allow warm air from the cows below to rise up into bedrooms that would have been fragrant with cow breath, among other things. Sometimes our ancestors may have lived cheek by udder with their livestock from necessity – a single cow is the equivalent of a 2kw fire - but there is also evidence of prehistoric introductions of animals (to Ireland, for example) that suggest a liking for the company of animals, a familiarity that led to wrens being called Jenny and redbreasts becoming Robins, that suggests our ancestors accorded wild creatures a level of personhood. Many country children have had pet Jackdaws, and some of the animals introduced by early man may have been children’s pets rather than farm livestock.
As a result of living with animals it is thought that something like 60% of our established human diseases originated in animals and jumped species at some time in prehistory. Often these diseases can be very serious when they first occur if there is no immunity in the population, but by now we have mainly learned to live with them. The islanders on remote St Kilda were reported to get very ill as the result of severe colds after the annual visits of the laird’s factor, because they had little immunity.
Hernando Cortez is credited, if that is the right word, with the conquest of Mexico. What is actually believed to have happened was that, after being initially welcomed by the Aztecs, who thought his arrival had been foretold, he was forced to retreat and regroup. He and his men set about building ships to sail on the lake around Mexico City, and climbed the volcano Popocatepetl to get sulphur for making gunpowder, in order to attack the city, but he returned to find the Aztec population had been devastated by European (often zoonotic) diseases they had caught from Cortez’s men. His conquest was a walkover, often over the bodies of dead Aztecs. Similarly, many of the Native American sites in the US that were once thought to have been relics of prehistory are now thought to have been abandoned as the result of European diseases which had been transmitted through the Native American population. These novel diseases, as in Mexico, were devastating to the people living in these settlements.
In Europe we still remember the influenza outbreak of 1917 which killed more people than the First World War. This was a bird flu that jumped species, a disease against which we had little resistance. The present Covid outbreak was most likely caused by a novel coronavirus that jumped from a bat to an animal being kept at the Wuhan Wet Market.
We have largely developed immunity to the first wave of zoonotic diseases, although people still die of flu. The second wave of zoonotic diseases includes Aids, and frankly terrifying diseases such as Ebola, as well as Covid. Like the first wave, they are to do with our interaction with animals, but in a way much less benign than the way early farmers exposed themselves unwittingly to animal diseases. These modern epidemics, from Aids onwards, seem to be caused either by disturbing virgin ecosystems in a way that creates pathways for diseases to start to spread to new animals, or by industrial farming. The next pandemics, like Covid-19, are a predictable and predicted outcome of how people source and grow food, trade and consume animals, and alter environments.
Although this is a global problem, I am here more concerned about our local Welsh Border chicken industry. The birds in broiler units have been specially bred to produce meat very quickly, and are genetically similar to each other. They live together in very close proximity, and outbreaks of bird flu in these units are steadily increasing. Although people can catch the virus, infections are uncommon, but a high proportion of humans who catch bird flu will die of it. Only two human cases have been reported since October 22, one each in the United Kingdom and the United States. But scientists are concerned that the high levels of virus circulating in bird populations mean that there are more opportunities for spillover into people. Avian influenza viruses change slowly over time, and a particular mutation could make them more transmissible in people and other species, says Ian Barr, deputy director of the World Health Organization (WHO) collaborating influenza centre at the Doherty Institute in Melbourne, Australia. “These viruses are like ticking time bombs,” he says. “Occasional infections are not an issue — it’s the gradual gaining of function of these viruses that is the real concern.”
Factory chicken farming, with crowded unsanitary and stressful conditions, birds with little genetic variation, and little UV light, creates the ideal environment where a virus can be transmitted very easily and has the opportunity to mutate, and also to jump species, for example to rats or to humans, both of which frequent chicken sheds. We were lucky, as a species, that Covid was not even more deadly. The risks to humans from bird flu are just as serious and unpredictable. The next pandemic could be more deadly than the last. The current bird flu is already devastating wild bird populations and beginning to affect mammals such as foxes and otters that have eaten the dead birds. The possibility of outbreaks in chicken units is the least of our problems. We and most of the birds and mammals of this country are at risk.
As for the rest of the world, I try not even to think about that, except for the moral problem it raises. We have an industrial chicken industry here that pretends to be a form of farming. It is questioned by some for treating the chickens inhumanely, so that even their very brief lives are stressful and unnatural. It is questioned because it produces large quantities of chicken manure that pollute our air, soil and water. It is questioned because it depends on feeds produced as the result of destroying ecosystems in areas such as Brazil. These are all enough to form the basis of the case against it. Add to that the risk that it might incubate the next devastating bird flu virus and you might feel you could rest your case.
But here someone will say ‘but even if we stop industrial chicken production, other countries will carry on, so why should we stop?’
We know that modern businesses such as Avara or Cargill tend not to concern themselves with morals or ethics, putting the creation of shareholder value above the survival of the planet. The chicken units polluting the Wye Valley linked to Avara are run by 151 farmers, if the Avara road map is to be believed. These are not faceless capitalists but members of families with close links to their local communities where they have many friends and relatives. Bird flu does not necessarily start in Wuhan. It is actually perfectly possible that a bird flu mutation could occur in any shed in Powys or Shropshire and turn out to be transmissible to humans. It is also entirely possible that such a mutation would be deadlier than any pandemic so far known. How would such a farmer feel, if his poultry shed were to incubate a disease that wiped out half the human population? And yet no farmer is likely to decide the risk is too great, because getting out of poultry would probably mean the family had to cancel their planned holiday in Florida, which might be thought too great a price to pay. But if the pandemic does originate in your shed, don’t expect me not to say I told you so. Or to point out that this was only one of four reasons to question the very existence of this industry.