[Vision2020] The Fowl, Council and Right To Grow Food

[Garrett Clevenger]

Ken wrote:
"Given...the growing awareness of the efficacy of avian transfer agents in interspecies virus transmission, it appears less than completely appropriate that new regulations allowing closer proximity of domestic fowl in urban areas would be approved without consideration of these observations and their possible effects."

The potential for increased disease transmission was brought up by a council member.  Randy Fife said he spoke with a researcher at Utah State University (I think that's where he works) who studies this.  Fife reported that there really was not any concern for disease transmission to humans from fowl in this situation.  He said the main concern was having water fowl and land fowl together as that could increase the chance of disease spread that would affect other wild water fowl.

It seems to me that having concentrated animal feedlot operations (CAFOs) would increase the chance of disease, as having thousands of animals crammed into a small area is unnatural and unhealthy.  To reduce disease, operators give the animals antibiotics which increases the chance for antibiotic resistance to build up.  That will probably cause more long-term problems than your neighbor who has a few turkeys next door.

For small-scale backyard fowl raisers, there isn't as much of a chance for disease to spread compared to CAFOs.  Since we have cold winters, that also reduces diseases and their vectors.  Perhaps if we were tropical, disease would be more of a concern in Moscow.

Then again, Ken is probably right in that we at least should be on the lookout for any potential increase in disease due to this new ordinance as it's better to be safe than sorry.  Who really knows what happens at such a microscopic level in any case?
 Garrett Clevenger
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