The Brownstone Institute article "Why Bird Flu? Why Now?" by Joel Salatin:
https://brownstone.org/articles/why-bird-flu-why-now/
agues that the current bird flu frenzy could backfire, causing greater harm to agriculture than the disease itself.
The bird flu frenzy—centred on the H5N1 strain, has sparked a disproportionate reaction that threatens to inflict more damage on agriculture than the virus naturally would. Salatin's article posits a sensible thesis: the panic, driven by industry agendas and government overreach, risks destabilising food systems, undermining farmer autonomy, and eroding consumer trust, far outweighing the disease's direct impact. This argument unfolds across several dimensions, revealing a cure worse than the ailment.
Salatin begins by questioning the timing and motives behind the H5N1 hysteria. He suggests it may serve industrial poultry interests, noting their claim that "cage-free is harmful to laying hens" due to higher disease exposure. With billions tied up in caged infrastructure, the industry could be leveraging bird flu fears to discredit cage-free systems and tilt markets back toward confinement operations. The Brownstone Institute's "Bird Flu is a Rerun of the Covid Playbook" (February 18, 2025) reinforces this, alleging a rerun of Covid-era tactics: mass culling, PCR-driven fear, and vaccine pushes that benefit Big Pharma (e.g., Zoetis, tied to Pfizer and Gates). The frenzy, then, isn't just about health, it's a power play, risking agricultural diversity for corporate gain.
Economically, the response is already backfiring. The USDA has spent $1.25 billion since 2022 culling over 130 million birds (USDA data), disrupting egg and poultry supply chains. Salatin warns this "mass slaughter" creates artificial shortages, spiking egg prices, up 38% in some regions (USDA, 2025), and bankrupting small farmers unable to absorb losses. Reports (e.g., AVMA, December 2024) note dairy farmers culling 20-25 percent of herds due to milk production drops, not deaths, amplifying financial ruin. Four-month farm shutdowns after positive PCR tests, even when most birds are healthy, throttles production further. This overreaction dwarfs H5N1's natural toll, rarely fatal to cows and mild in most human cases (CDC, February 2025), making agriculture a victim of policy, not pathology.
Ecologically, the frenzy compounds the damage. Salatin argues that culling millions of birds disrupts ecosystems, reducing genetic diversity in poultry stocks and weakening resilience to future outbreaks. The Brownstone piece on "The Latest 'Bird Flu' Psyop" (February 7, 2025), warns that vaccinating flocks, as Zoetis proposes, selects for virulent strains, a pattern seen globally (e.g., Egypt, Vietnam). Wild birds, the virus's natural reservoir, spread H5N1 regardless, rendering culls futile (Nature, January 2025). This is "killing the food supply to save it," as migratory geese, untouched by policy, remain the true vector. The agricultural cost is a self-inflicted wound, escalating a manageable disease into a systemic threat.
Societally, the frenzy risks eroding trust and autonomy. Salatin critiques the top-down approach, indiscriminate PCR testing (known for false positives, per Brownstone, February 2025) and forced culls—as stripping farmers of decision-making power. Analyses (e.g., VCU Health, February 2025) note low public risk—70 U.S. human cases, one death, no human-to-human spread—yet the heavy-handed response fuels fear, echoing Covid lockdowns. Social media posts lament soaring egg prices and supply shocks, blaming "biosecurity theatre" over herd immunity strategies. This disconnect could fracture consumer confidence in agriculture, driving demand toward lab-grown alternatives or imports, further hollowing out rural economies.
The establishment counters that H5N1's mammalian spread (e.g., cows, cats) and mutations (Johns Hopkins, January 2025) justify vigilance. But Salatin and others argue the response overshoots: culling healthy flocks, pushing unproven vaccines, and ignoring wild vectors amplify harm. The disease's low lethality, unlike 1918's Spanish Flu (Harvard Medical School, March 2025), doesn't match the scorched-earth tactics. The frenzy, fuelled by fear and profit, risks a self-fulfilling prophecy: a crippled agriculture sector, not a pandemic, as the lasting legacy.
The bird flu frenzy, as Salatin contends, could backfire by prioritising control over pragmatism, damaging agriculture more than H5N1 ever could. Economic losses, ecological disruption, and societal distrust outstrip the virus's modest threat, driven by an industry-government axis that thrives on crisis. While vigilance is warranted, the current path, mass culls, vaccine gambles, and farmer disempowerment, threatens a cure deadlier than the disease, leaving agriculture to bear the scars. In short, while information is scanty at present, this does seem to be a psyop to destroy food resources.
https://brownstone.org/articles/why-bird-flu-why-now/
"Ever since the Covid debacle, I've become dubious of ANYTHING the government says – er, way MORE dubious. The official narrative is wrong 90 percent of the time.
So a bunch of things suddenly fell into place for me today when one of our staff, who just returned from visiting family in Michigan, came with stories of signs over vacant egg shelves in the supermarket saying: "Egg shortage due to cage free chicken production." She didn't have pictures; I'm hoping someone reading this blog can take some pictures.
I'm not sure she quoted the signs exactly right, but it brings to mind conversations I had several years ago when Burger King announced that within 10 years they would use only cage-free eggs. The food writer for the Washington Post called me to get my comments about such an earth-shattering announcement. Of course, she assumed I'd be thrilled and have all kinds of wonderful things to say about it.
My response was "Why 10 years? We have a Burger King 15 minutes from our farm; we could supply cage-free eggs today. In fact, we can do even better and offer pastured GMO-free, vaccine-free eggs right now. Why the long runway?"
I began doing some sleuthing on the issue, talking to folks friendly to the industry. They were quite surprised at my naivete. "Don't you realize the plan? The long runway is to give time for the industry to prove the superiority of caged hens so they don't have to go to cage-free."
Industry folks were adamant, and are right now, that caged birds are healthier than cage-free. And they will fight tooth and nail to keep caged production systems.
It actually makes sense. Cage-free means the birds live in and on their poop and stir up far more fecal dust to inhale. Caged birds, although they can't move around, at least don't live on their poop and don't have fecal bedding to stir up and create pathogenic dust. The industry position is that cage-free is harmful to laying hens, period. And the industry has a lot of money tied up in caged infrastructure, from housing to egg collection to feed distribution. That's the train, and it doesn't like to be derailed.
Those old conversations from several years ago suddenly popped into my mind when I learned today that supermarkets are putting up signage blaming cage-free chickens for the bird flu. "See, we told you, you dimwit animal welfare folks. You're such idiots and now your cage-free rules and prejudices are destroying the egg industry." This could be a great win for the caged-laying hen industry.
Could it be that the entire bird flu epizootic is an industry plan to discredit cage-free eggs and tilt the public toward caged-laying hens? Is that possible?"