‘The Writing Is on the Wall’: Bird Flu Warning From PETA

Following reports from CSIRO that three strains of bird flu – H7N3, H7N9 and H7N8 – have been detected in Australian poultry farms, PETA has erected billboards across Melbourne reminding everyone that the cruel meat and egg industries serve as breeding grounds for deadly pathogens that are hazardous to human health. The billboards, placed in Bentleigh, Port Melbourne, and Windsor, show chickens hung by the feet at an abattoir beside “bird flu” scrawled on a wall in dripping “blood”.

More than 1.8 million Australian birds have already been killed in an attempt to contain the circulating H7 strains, and 11 farms in the country have been impacted. New research indicates that the H5N1 subtype of the avian influenza A virus appears to be becoming “more adept” at infecting mammals – in the US, cattle in 12 states and several dairy industry workers have been infected. Since 2003, the World Health Organization has recorded 893 cases of confirmed H5N1 influenza in humans around the globe, which have led to 463 deaths.

Chickens are curious, clever individuals with distinct personalities, but those used for meat are farmed more intensively than any other type of animal. Around 650 million birds are raised for their flesh in Australia each year, 90% of whom are kept on dark, filthy factory farms, where they’re denied everything that’s natural and important to them and severe crowding increases the likelihood of the spread of disease.

Our appetite for chickens’ flesh and eggs is killing birds – and may end up killing us, too. Intensively farming animals makes the spread of viruses inevitable, and it’s likely only a matter of time before we face another pandemic. To continue confining and slaughtering animals when we could simply choose vegan foods is nothing short of madness.

Every time we sit down to eat, we’re either feeding injustice or fighting it. You can help change our food system, protect the environment, and reduce both the inherent risks to workers and the suffering of animals by ending your support for the exploitation and slaughter of living, feeling beings.

Please, eat as if all our lives depend on it, because they do.

Go Vegan Now!