Nine poultry farmers commit suicide in flu-hit India [View All]

[Bhaisahab]

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Nine poultry farmers in India have killed themselves and more are facing a grim future after bird flu slashed demand for chicken meat, an industry group said on Wednesday.

India has culled hundreds of thousands of birds to contain several outbreaks of the H5N1 avian flu virus in poultry since February, but the disease has continued to resurface, mostly in western Maharashtra state.

The scare has decimated the country's $7.8 billion poultry industry, which says losses in the past two months have reached $2.2 billion.

continued: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2006-04-12T073942Z_01_BOM269913_RTRUKOC_0_US-BIRDFLU-INDIA.xml

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an interesting thing about bird flu in india. the outbreak happened all of a sudden in a poultry farm. "farm" is the wrong word to describe it really. a typical poultry farm consists of a large ware-housey thing with rows and rows of cages in which are crammed chickens. they are fed in these cages, and are never allowed to roam free. so the question is - how did bird flu appear in such conditions? i wonder because bird flu is supposed to be transmitted world wide by migratory birds flying in from the north. there is no scope for interaction between migratories and tandoor-bound chickens. so how the hell did the caged birds acquire bird flu. perhaps it was injected?