Avian Influenza: Time to Shut the Intensive Poultry Flu Factories?

By Caroline Lucas and Colin Hines, July 2006

Download the report (308k)

On Friday 22 September, Pandemic Action took part in a meeting on bird flu at the Green Party conference in Brighton. Milan Rai of Pandemic Action joined Green MEP Caroline Lucas and Dr Richard Lawson, former Green Party spokesperson on health, at a fringe session in Hove Town Hall.

Caroline Lucas launched her new report 'Avian Flu: Time to Shut the Intensive Poultry Flu Factories?', which looks at how intensive poultry farming is speeding up the mutation of lethal flu viruses in birds, and examines the evidence that it is primarily the poultry industry, and not wild birds, which has been the means of transmission for the H5N1 virus from Asia to Europe and Africa.

Milan Rai addressed two key problems with the current public debate about bird flu. One, that the spread of H5N1 among birds across geographical borders was the key issue. Rather, he said, it is the 'species barrier' between birds and humans that should be the focus of our attention, since once the virus becomes transmittable between humans it is likely to spread unstoppably around the world. Second is the perception that a flu pandemic is a natural disaster about which we can do nothing. Rather, he argued that through the development of mega-farms and mega-slums, we are creating conditions in human societies where our vulnerability to a pandemic is heightened. There are concrete measures that can be taken nationally and internationally to reverse this, he said, and that is why Pandemic Action has been set up - to campaign for global solidarity against the threat of global disease.

Dr. Lawson talked about the science of the bird flu virus, and explained that paradoxically, if H5N1 is anything like the 1918 virus then it will disproportionately affect young healthy people. This is because of the 'cytokine storm', which sees the body's immune system respond so aggressively to the arrival of a flu virus that in the process of fighting back it damages the body. He also argued in favour of testing airliner cabin air filters after all flights to monitor the spread of flu viruses (and other infectious diseases). These measures would be unlikely to absolutely contain the virus, but they would slow its global spread and buy valuable time to prepare and distribute a vaccine.

Download the report (308k)