@plantparadise7 - Jonny Paradise
Farmer Joel Salatin on bird flu immunity:
"The thing that gets me about avian influenza is the response to it. In any flock that gets avian influenza, there are always survivors—many times, more survivors than not.
Now, you would think that if the people in charge were actually thinking, they would say, "Huh, we’ve got a flock here of chickens. Some got it, some didn’t. Why don’t we save the ones that didn’t?
We’ll take their genetics, breed them, and maybe we’ll actually breed in more robust immune systems. Wow, fancy that! Wouldn’t that be cool?"
"No. If you have 10,000 birds in a flock and one bird’s got avian influenza, immediately, by government decree, all of them must be exterminated."
All of them—survivors, non-survivors—everything.
Back many years ago, when a pathogenic influenza hit Indochina—remember when it came through Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and all that?—the UK did some experiments. They found that if a chicken eats two fresh blades of grass a day—two blades of fresh grass a day—she doesn’t get avian influenza."
@plantparadise7 - Jonny Paradise
Salatin continues:
"You know, I’m waiting for them to say, "Huh, I wonder if we should try putting these chickens out on pasture, moving them around all the time, giving them some fresh area to be in, and feeding them non-GMO feeds instead of genetically modified organism feeds. Let’s see if we can build a better immune system so that they’re so robust they won’t get avian influenza."
"Ours are eating way more than two blades, so we trust the immune system. We trust the system. We don’t sit here, you know, paranoid and paralyzed in fear. We believe that a robust immune system and an ecologically sound system actually bring functionality and credible solutions to this issue."
@plantparadise7 - Jonny Paradise
Joel on the source of Bird Flu:
"Every time it starts, it starts in a concentrated animal feeding operation or some sort of industrial, concentrated situation that’s unhygienic, unsanitary, and fully vaccinated, medicated, adulterated, pharmaceutical-ized, and everything else you can imagine."
@plantparadise7 - Jonny Paradise
Salatin on egg CAFOs blaming nature:
"When the industry blames wild birds, they always say, "Oh, it's these ducks, it's these geese, it's these wild critters that are bringing this in." Listen, any kind of production system that demonizes wildlife is automatically wrong. You can't have any kind of actual, credible food production system in which wildlife is the enemy. That’s number one."
@plantparadise7 - Jonny Paradise
Joel Salatin concludes:
"Whatever you're hearing about avian influenza—I don’t know whether it’s true or not.
I don’t trust basically anything the government says anymore. But even if it is true, the remedy is the opposite of what it ought to be.
The whole thing is upside down and backward, and it’s time to restore some sanity to our agriculture system."
