As bird flu outbreaks become more common in China and elsewhere, scientists debate the underlying cause
Experts argue whether blame for spread of virus lies with factory farming or live poultry markets
The answer to whether industrial-scale poultry farming is responsible for bird flu differs depending on who you ask – a virologist or a geographer.
In a book published last month, Stephen Hinchliffe, a professor of human geography at the University of Exeter in Britain, argues that mass livestock production is driving molecular changes in diseases that could lead to human pandemics.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the world raised more than 21 billion chickens in 2014, up from 19 billion in 2011, or about three fowls for every person on the planet. The bulk of that production came from the United States, China and Europe.
Rapidly rising global poultry numbers, along with selective breeding and production techniques that have dramatically altered the physiology of chickens and other poultry, have made the planet more “infectable”, Hinchliffe and three co-authors argue in their book, Pathological Lives: Disease, Space and Biopolitics.
