Understanding Bird Flu

Sometimes when you have been working with certain topics for a long period of time you forget that not everyone has the same level of understanding that you do. A recent case in the news about the bird flu, which don't get me wrong is a big problem  was where a backyard person in New York state had two birds survive the  bird flu outbreak and the USDA decided to kill  the survivors to prevent the continued spread  of the disease as they stated it.  While on the surface that may seem like a good thing to do, we need to think back at what man has done to survive since time began. The earliest farmers we're not plant breeders or animal breeders but when disaster came through they were only able to save from the survivors and therefore created a stronger more genetically tolerant strain of whatever it was grain, fruit, vegetable or animal. I have been breeding vegetable varieties and working with poultry for over 50 years. When I grew up out west my  vegetable breeding projects dealt with cold tolerance, poor soil  and dry conditions. When I moved to Iowa I immediately had to take on breeding for disease and pest resistance, things I did not deal with  when I was out west.  You have to deal with the conditions you are given. When you have a wealth of genetic diversity to draw upon that is not a tough task.

I understand when you go into a large poultry building with 2 million chickens which are basically identical clones of one another they probably have to destroy the whole flock if it gets infected. Modern genetically messed up commercial turkeys are even worse and  are so narrow in genetic strength. One would think we would have learned something about lack of genetic strength over the years from events such as the Irish Potato Famine. In that great disaster an entire population in the 1840’s suffered because of the reliance on one particular variety of potato. That variety  had no tolerance to late blight and caused near starvation in the Irish people when the crops failed year after year. We have been provided in this world with a wealth of genetic diversity but we sometimes forget as a society that we need to rely on that genetic diversity to find answers to our problems and not constantly rely on technology and modern vaccines to solve the issue. I have a master's degree in biology and have been studying aspects of plant and animal diseases for years. We would be far better off as a society if we looked for resistance in these survivors of the bird flu instead of relying on technology to find us a vaccine.  Anyone who studies biology at all knows that viruses change and mutate so quickly that the vaccine of today is probably not going to be that good in the future. My one and only wish is that our USDA officials would wake up before it's too late and they destroy the final two chickens that may be the answer to a future egg and meat supply for the world. We need as a society to look at our genetic resources, look at the survivors in these epidemics and while isolating  them  for a period of time utilize and research them as source for controlling these epidemics. Breed from the survivors and utilize the answer  that has been provided  to the problem instead of mass extermination to protect the genetically weak mass produced  birds of today.