Bird Flu

As the dreaded H5N1 virus causing Bird Flu has re-entered India through West Bengal, things are going topsy-turvy in the wingled world of Chickens and birds. I am sure, they must be scared of any human coming towards them. Ask any chicken, how is it feeling, I am sure it will answer, "I am fine."


The hundreds of chickens in all our poultry farms wouldn't know what hit them. Why suddenly they are getting killed in hundreds of thousands. I guess there will be panic all over. I remember the wonderful animation film, "Chicken Run", where they try to escape the clutches of a woman and a man.

The newspapers say that the virus has spread to almost all the districts of West Bengal and has even started getting into couple of North Eastern states of India. Egg prices have dropped drastically. No country wants import of poultry products from India. Chicken meat is available at a cheap rate throughout the country, I am told.

But, what I am wondering is, what gives man the privilege to go around killing hundreds of thousands of chickens because the virus may infect some humans as well ? In the last decades, some 350 people have died due to this virus; but how many millions of birds have been killed by us ?


What will happen if we are affected by some virus which will spread by air / water, and affect other humans or animals ? Though TB and Leprosy also spread like this, most of us have immunity and get away from the bacteria causing these diseases. But, if one of these killer diseases become resistant and if an affected person coughs next to us and if that results in we getting infected and eventually die, what will be our reaction ? Will we go around culling all the infected people ?

But, everyone is not so heartless. In the Hindu, there was a moving picture of a woman crying for the birds in her house when she was asked to hand over them for culling.
The dominance of man over everything else is sickening, but such images give some hope that humanity may survive - though these birds didn't.