Fifty years ago, American farmers were chickens have discovered that by enclosing their birds they could produce chickens at a lower cost and with less effort than with traditional farming methods. Locked in long windowless sheds, chickens and chickens have disappeared from our fields. Factory farming was born. Refers to "factory farming" because the sheds are similar to plants, because every also is thought in drawing on the methods of the industry: it is transformed, in fed them grain, live animals for meat or eggs at the lowest cost possible.
If, by chance, you have the opportunity to stroll through one of the sheds, if a peasant you leash recreation, you can sometimes discover up to 30,000 chickens in one place! The national Council of the chicken, the professional association of the U.S. chicken industry, recommend a stocking density of 548 cm2 per bird: a surface smaller than a sheet of A4 format. When the chicken is close to market weight, they completely cover the floor. No chicken can move without having to push other birds. For the production of eggs, the hens can barely move because they are trapped in wire cages, which can store over three floors, one above the other.

Environmental advocates explain that such methods are not sustainable. First, they rely on the use of fossil fuel energy to illuminate and ventilate the sheds and to transport the grain which feeds poultry. When this grain, that human beings humans could eat directly, is given to the chickens, they use it in part to create bones and feathers, as well as other parts of their bodies that we cannot eat. We receive so less food in return than what we have given to poultry, less protein also. The treatment of concentrated chicken manure causes serious pollution of our rivers and our groundwater. Counsel for the animals rise, against the high density imposed for chickens, prevents them from forming a natural flock. The air in these sheds is execrable, chicken manure there causes an abnormal concentration of ammonia. Medical experts are concerned that these birds are regularly force-fed antibiotics to accelerate their development, and this dirty and stressful conditions. The development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria may believe, represent a threat to public health.
Despite all these criticisms, in the last twenty years, industrial farming of chickens, but also pigs, calves, dairy cows and cattle is widely distributed in developing countries, in Asia in particular. We discover now that the consequences could be far more serious that it only had imagined. As it exposed Earl Brown, a virologist at the University of Ottawa, after an outbreak of avian influenza to the Canada, "poultry high density is the perfect environment for generating virulent avian influenza viruses". Many experts share this view. In October 2005, a working group of the United Nations has identified one of the main sources of the outbreak of avian flu: "The farming methods that bring together a large number of animals in small spaces."
Factory farming advocates often say that avian influenza can be spread among flocks, release, wild ducks or other migratory birds, who join the breeding birds to feed in their company or get rid of their feces flying overhead to free range. As Earl Brown shows yet, the virus found in wild birds are generally not dangerous. On the contrary, it is when these viruses enter a high-density they mutate to become much more virulent. By contrast, birds raised by traditional methods show a greater resistance to disease than the birds living in systems confined intensive livestock. Industrial farms are also biologically secure. They are often infested of mice, rats and other animals that carry disease.
So far, the number of beings human deaths due to bird flu is relatively limited. But if the virus mutates into and become transmissible between humans, the number of deaths could reach hundreds of millions. Governments are, rightly, taking steps to prepare for this threat. What is but it is that Government spending in this area are actually a kind of subsidy to the poultry industry. As any grant, it is not economically viable. Factory farming has evolved because it seemed less expensive than more traditional methods. In fact, it was because some of the costs were returned to others. It must be acknowledged today that displayed by industrial rearing costs accounted for a small portion of the total invoice and that did us support costs and risks much larger. In economic terms, these costs should be "internalized" rather than rejected farmers on the rest of the population.
This will be easy to do, but we could start by imposing a tax on the products of factory farming. This tax should fund the measures taken today by Governments to combat avian influenza. You may discover while chicken from factory farming are not really cheaper.