The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found on three more farms in northern Nigeria, where thousands of poultry have died recently. Full story here. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4700264.stm But thought this interesting and I bet it happens all over the world during these outbreaks: snip> <snip Where does the US purchase it's poultry from if outside the US? I thought I heard something about Bush openning up importws from China. Wouldn't that be poor timing?
Good Post.... Yup... I heard about us buying chicken from china.... and yup... IMHO.... that would be unwise....
Does , say, Tyson import from abroad? Or do we get it from the US? I am getting more and more skeptical of eating chicken these days. Eggs from Commercial farms too. I have a local egg supplier
I dont know it could be that a few exotics get imported from time to time but for the most part chickens are hatched raised and slaughtered for the stores all here in the US. I know we have at least on hatchery not far from us that ships chicks all over the country. I know there are alos comercial egg plants all over the place and Tyson has contracts with lots of farms around here where they raise chickens and turkeys for Tyson and then ship them all to their plants to be processed. The eggs would be about the safest of anything regarding poultry since the normal way of doing them is to have about 4 or 5 hens in a cage that has a sloped floor and an opening in the bottom side and the cages are in a building row after row and as they lay the eggs they roll out of the cage onto a conveyer and then get washed and packed. SO the laying hens never see the light of day and so couldnt get infected by wild birds nearly as easy as say the ones on the local small farm that free range and could more easily come into contact with infected wild birds. On the ones that raise them for meat some have yards they run in and others, I would say most keep them in buildings and in cages also so that they cant burn the calories and that way they can put on more weight from the same amount of feed. Basicly what it boils down to is as long as you are not paying extra for the 'cage free' or 'free range' chickens or eggs then you shouldnt have anything to worry about.
