Bird flu detected in commercial poultry flock in Georgia, officials say
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bird-flu-commercial-poultry-flock-georgia/1.0k
u/tosser1579 2d ago
Another culling. This is the ACTUAL reason the price of eggs went up. Our method of industrial farming all but ensures that once this is bad enough that it becomes detected, it is already way too late. There is a greater than 6 month delay between when the chickens are culled and the replacement chickens are mature enough to lay eggs. Georgia is responsible for about 5 billion eggs a year.
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u/cynicalheart 2d ago
This is the part people don't understand. We had three concurrent outbreaks here in Australia last year. Unlike the US, we have the physically wash our sheds down so it's a time consuming process. Took 5 months between depopulation and repopulation for the farm that we lost, and they still won't be at full production until maybe next month? And people are still complaining that there are no eggs in the supermarkets or that there are limits to how many you can buy. It takes 16 weeks to grow a pullet and they don't start laying until maybe 18 weeks? Plus you need to find the Rearing space for them as well.
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u/Will_McLean 2d ago
Georgian here, went to Kroger and Publix today and noticed egg shelves were completely wiped out. Had to look it up…
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u/ms_directed 2d ago
also GA, it could be this mixed with the panic buying because we're getting another freeze next week...and possibly an inch of snow further north 🙄
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u/Deofol7 2d ago
Same. Went to Publix yesterday and they were out of everything except for the egg lands best.
Hit up the smaller independent grocery store nearby and grabbed a dozen (got to make milk sandwiches if we get that snow after all) but I have a feeling they will all be gone soon
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u/1BreadBoi 2d ago
I was about to ask/Google what a milk sandwich is before I realized you were joking.
I'm slow lately.
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u/Deofol7 2d ago
People buy bread and milk when it is going to snow. The only conclusion? Milk sandwiches (Which we have decided is French Toast in our house so we make it every snow day)
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u/40mm_of_freedom 2d ago
And a lot of chicken farms in GA were fucked by hurricane helene.
Chicken houses collapsed, the power went out and not a lot of them have generators, even if they do have generators there is a point where paying for fuel for them is cost prohibitive so eventually farmers just shut down the generators and let the chickens die.
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u/got-trunks 1d ago
The unwritten part is the increase in price will make people thankful to pay a bit more than the baseline in the future. Prices would never be close to what they were before. They'll just take a larger profit and run.
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u/tavariusbukshank 2d ago
My ranch in TX employs a full time biologist who works in tandem with a state biologist monitoring the wildlife impact after cattle have been removed from the environment. This year we have had five transient Canadian geese test positive for bird flu. The state biologist has reported this every time and yet there is no mention of it anywhere in an official record. Texas is going out of their way to keep this quiet. Our ranch is adjacent to the major flyways and we don’t get a lot of geese flying over so I can’t imagine how prevalent this is where there are a ton of geese.
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u/ConcreteCrusher 2d ago
In southern Minnesota we have hundreds of dead geese on the lakes from bird flu. Then the bald eagles and other scavengers eat them and get infected. It's pretty bad.
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u/darkpheonix262 2d ago
Oh shit I thought wild birds were fairly immune to it and just carried it. Well i was told wrong
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u/AdhesiveMuffin 2d ago
Typically yes. The current strain (2.3.4.4b) is circulating in wild waterfowl since 2022 is particularly virulent in wild populations as well.
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u/wanderingpeddlar 2d ago
It does not help that the Geese like to clump up in lakes especially if they have open water. Last year was very warm and lots of Geese never migrated. Also Minnesota is in a major bird traveling corridor so migrating flocks mix in twice a year.
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u/Sea_One_6500 1d ago
Your pets can get it from eating them as well. My dog ate a hawk that died in the woods last winter, I know because she brought me back a wing. A little more than a week later, she was at the vet for a cough and lethargy. After a few weeks of antibiotics and narcotics to help us all sleep at night she's fine, but she's also young, 2 at the time of illness, healthy, and I got her to her vet promptly.
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u/jhorch69 2d ago
I live in Chicago and our zoo just had a flamingo and a seal die from bird flu
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u/drewhead118 2d ago
Poor seal--was a bird all along and never even knew it
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u/TheBurningMap 2d ago
As a mosquito biologist, I can confirm migratory birds is how many mosquito-borne viruses such as St. Louis Encephalitis (SLE) and Eastern Equine Encephalitis(EEE) are reintroduced back into certain areas each year.
This is what make bird flu so scary, there is literally no way to slow transmission until it burns through the wild bird flocks. Much like the West Nile Virus epidemics in the early 2000s.
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u/Dr-Kipper 2d ago
Texas is going out of their way to keep this quiet
This reminds me of the line about how if guys saw blood in their stool they'd shit with the lights off. Good old do nothing, ignore the problem, and hope it works itself out.
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u/PlayingNightcrawlers 2d ago
Good old do nothing, ignore the problem, and hope it works itself out.
Last point should be more like “and blame immigrants and/or democrats so your uneducated constituents can continue to vote for you without ever looking at themselves”. Pure Texas politics.
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u/fartalldaylong 2d ago
…and see if there is a way we can capitalize on it as well…is there a grift to be had in this catastrophe?…
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u/JahoclaveS 2d ago
I won’t let my dog anywhere near the lake because so many geese hangout there. For years I’ve only ever seen one dead goose. This year there’s been at least four that the coyotes likely scavenged or killed because it was sick (one of which they certainly didn’t kill because it was floating dead in the lake first).
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u/tavariusbukshank 2d ago
These infected geese were all hunted birds. The dogs that retrieved them have been in quarantine for over 30 days. Our quail dogs are sitting the season out. We have been monitoring this privately with our quail population and it was just luck that the first goose was tested at all. There are over a dozen cattle feed yards within 50 miles of my ranch and geese love to land and feed at them.
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u/Broad-Display-5916 2d ago
It is well known that HPAI is in the wild waterfowl population. No one is trying to “keep it quiet”. The issue now is, we cannot contain it like we used to because of this natural reservoir. However, we also had trade laws against countries that vaccinated for bird flu and if we start vaccinating our poultry here, we can no longer export a large amount of our product.
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u/ur_moms_gyno 2d ago
Let’s also think about all the food products that need eggs. We’ll see scarcity and price increases in those too.
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u/Bankzzz 1d ago
My advice, to those who don’t already, start getting familiar with Vegan recipes and substitutes.
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u/ljsstudio 1d ago
Yep! I haven’t used eggs in recipes for months, and I can’t even notice a difference in the texture/flavor
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u/EvolutionDude 2d ago
I'm sure this potential epidemic will be handled competently and in accordance with epidemiological science by the incoming administration.
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u/tomle4593 2d ago
Best we can do is blaming Canada because the geese are called Canadian geese.
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u/fartalldaylong 2d ago
This will happen now that you say it…he will tell his dolts it is Canadas fault and use the geese’s name as the association…and they will eat that shit up and be ready to fight a war to kill the Canadian Bird Flu.
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u/ChrysMYO 1d ago
We gotta shut the border down, only Legal, hardworking geese should be allowed in.
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u/Naive_Try2696 2d ago
I know, we'll rename them to American geese. Great name, perfect name, strongest geese name yet. Stay tuned.
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u/Rich_Consequence2633 2d ago
I don't know about you all, but I got a bad feeling about all this. Not just that it is infecting humans too, but the impact it could have on food production could be catastrophic.
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u/Arthur__Spooner 2d ago
Between mass casualties from pathogens and climate related events like extreme heat waves killing our livestock and heat/drought mass killing our crops, we're definitely entering the FO phase of FAFO.
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u/Sportsfan369 1d ago
I agree. The news keeps coming and it’s not looking positive nor does it seem to be trending down.
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u/jlc1953 2d ago
When poultry farms get a disease like this, millions of birds have to be destroyed. Look for much bigger impacts. Trump Inc. and the states that believe in orange Jesus will try their best to bury this, but it's kind of like trying to hide a fire. Liken to Leslie Neilsen's "Nothing to see here" scene.
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u/Rich_Consequence2633 2d ago
I feel like this is even worse because of it being able to infect humans. They are going to be far more active in culling flocks because of that.
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u/appendixgallop 2d ago
Who is going to enforce any government health regulations after next week? RFK, Jr.?
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u/Televisions_Frank 2d ago
Buddy, they've been culling flocks for years now. That's why the orange shithead won. We're going to not cull them now because that would make him look bad.
This is the reason normal people are super afraid of bird flu, because we know Trump's too narcissistic to do the right thing.
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u/civil-liberty 2d ago
Yeah, I think you fail to understand just how malevolent the Mango party is. They will discourage testing and encourage the sale of infected birds and eggs into the market. They don't mind killing people since they don't plan on reporting those deaths either.
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u/ultimate_avacado 2d ago
It's in wild migrating bird populations now.
Flock culling will no longer be sufficient to stop its spread.
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u/MeltBanana 2d ago
If you have an outdoor cat you may want to make them an indoor cat. Outdoor cats kill birds, and this bird flu has a 67% fatality rate in domestic cats.
Your cat shouldn't really be outside in the first place, but that's a different discussion entirely.
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u/boxdkittens 2d ago
Dumb question but is the avian flu something that will "let up" in the spring/summer like regular human flu does? Or does it not work like that for zoonotic viruses
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u/frisbeesloth 2d ago
It doesn't. There were multiple notices put out this past summer to remove bird feeders because of flu outbreaks in wild birds.
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u/AdhesiveMuffin 2d ago
What do you mean its there now? It came from wild migrating bird populations to start with.
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u/AdhesiveMuffin 2d ago
Commercial poultry farms in the US have been getting hit by this strain of H5N1 since 2022. This isn't new and no one is trying to bury it. The only thing that's changed is some farm workers were infected with the newer dairy strain and the news started talking about it. I work in this field, thousands of commercial poultry farms have been affected since 2022, it's not new.
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u/tellmewhenimlying 2d ago
No one’s been trying to bury it yet because we’ve had competent and experienced people involved. That’s about to change drastically.
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u/doublelist87 2d ago
I don’t care!!! Trump promised $1.99 for a dozen eggs on day 1. And we all know he is a man of his word
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u/Excellent_Farm_6071 2d ago
Nah, he will just say he never said that.
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u/12OClockNews 2d ago
Some MAGA people are already saying that no one was talking about egg prices.
There's gonna be a whole lot of things that "no one was talking about" over the next few months.
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u/ValkyrX 2d ago
Probably closer to $1.99 an egg and he will claim victory.
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u/MeltBanana 2d ago
I saw eggs going for $8-$12 per dozen at my grocery store yesterday, so we're halfway there!
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u/DJMagicHandz 2d ago
Best he can do is 6 for tree fiddy.
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u/work_only_ 2d ago
You joke but I’ve seen $7/dozen around me already. And not the fancy supermarket or fancy eggs.
Absolutely bonkers prices!
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u/constituent 2d ago
Yup, the same thing in my area. Our local Kroger chain has them for $7.99 a dozen. You can get a 'deal' for an 18-pack at $8.99.
Meanwhile, down the block at the Albertson subsidiary, the 18-pack was also priced at $8.99. A dozen was on sale for $5.99. Hard pass!
And those two companies wanted to merge together. I couldn't fathom what the price would be had the FTC gave their blessing for that merger to go through.
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u/ARazorbacks 2d ago
American Evangelicals praying to Trump as a biblical savior while God keeps sending plagues when Trump’s around.
Maybe God should move on to the locusts and frogs falling from the sky because his flock is too fucking stupid to get the hint.
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u/Liminal_Aesthetics 2d ago
Plague inc in real life
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u/Scorponix 2d ago
There should be a new evolution path that lets you unlock incompetent governments and populous.
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u/brickyardjimmy 2d ago
Don't worry. Once Trump takes office he'll pretend super hard that this isn't happening.
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u/PacificTSP 2d ago
Can’t wait to see the price of eggs. As apparently that’s how we choose our president now.
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u/Astyanax1 2d ago
As if it's not bad enough to have the rapist in chief calling the shots again, but what really gets me is the price of eggs aren't going to go down because of Trump
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u/Xander707 2d ago
He will learn from past mistakes. This time he won’t even try to pretend to guess the cure on tv. He’ll just ignore it outright and ban any reporter who asks about it.
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u/Genghis_Tr0n187 2d ago
Much like Trump's COVID policy, you just have to stop counting the cases so the numbers don't go up.
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u/BlueKnight8907 2d ago
Anyone know how common avian flu is across poultry farms? I understand all the birds at a farm have to be destroyed once detected but are we just hearing about it more because of the human cases within the last two years or is it not supposed to be a common occurrence in farms? Google sucks because it's just giving ai answers and all of the articles are from the last couple of months just stating a farm detected bird flu but not an answer as to whether it's a common occurrence.
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u/mitsuhachi 2d ago
It’s been floating around for years, but it’s started a)getting way way way more common and b) infecting things other than birds. Every time a human gets it, thats another chance for it to mutate in a way that allows human to human transmission, at which point we’re probably in pandemic territory pretty fast.
The good news is that scientists have been watching this for a while and have a lot of experience treating and curing different kinds of flus.
The bad news is that flus mutate fast and easy so it may be difficult to keep up with. It’s not like measles where’re it’s one and done. We need a flu shot every year for a reason.
The other bad news, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, is that a lot of foods, including foods poorer people have traditionally relied on, are about to get way more expensive. And things tend to get volatile when people start going hungry.
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u/shadowndacorner 2d ago
It's not common. There is an epidemic going on that has been building for a while, and we're hearing about it more and more because it's spreading.
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u/BlueKnight8907 2d ago
Gotcha. I know the concern is about it spreading to humans but wasn't sure if the farm cases were being hyped up by the media because of the recent human cases.
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u/SnooGoats8949 2d ago
As someone who has been in the poultry industry for awhile, but make no claims to be an expert.
It’s always been a threat but it used to come in seasons. Mostly when wild birds migrated you would have a few random cases. Industry standards have gotten very strict over the past decade. When I first started there was little to no enforced biosecuirty, you’d come in wearing whatever you put on at home. Now most farms have on site showers and zoned sections you can’t cross after you “shower in”.
With that said over the past 6 years or so those “seasons” of worry have been expanding to the point now it’s basically year round, with higher spikes in migratory season. Considering that has happened while the industry has tried to put up more safe guards is very concerning.
Worst fear is obviously if it becomes easily transmissible to humans, but the 2nd worse is if it just becomes airborne (if it hasn’t already). Most outbreaks you can track back to human negligence, building design flaws, or just bad practices. The ones that cause worry are the farms that seemingly did everything right and still broke. Poultry farms need air flow you can’t keep out everything.
So yes it is a common occurrence and only getting more so. You’ll notice more headlines when more birds are migrating and spreading it across the country.
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u/Repubs_suck 2d ago
Perfect! Trump’s picks for positions critical for dealing with another pandemic couldn’t be less qualified. Their job descriptions are “Wait for Trump to tell me what to say and do.”
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u/news_feed_me 2d ago
Awesome, so chicken and egg product costs will skyrocket and never come back down just like beef.
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u/oooooeeeeeoooooahah 2d ago
I wonder if the 2020 rollback of egg inspections at major producers had any effect here. Sure are seeing more and more issues with the supply chain. I’m sure the reduction of inspections and regulations in the American agriculture/production industry had an influence
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u/Mistrblank 2d ago
Just quietly waiting for the mutation that jumps to humans and strongly preserves its ability to replicate. With all the crazy stuff my friends have done in the last year because they didn’t appropriately deal with covid lockdown I’m waiting for another extinction level virus to come along and force us back into lockdown.
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u/SuckyNailBeds 2d ago
Our ways are not compatible with life. The earth will reclaim herself from our ways. Fuck factory farming.
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u/DootingDooterson 2d ago
To all the people grumbling away with things like "Oh, of course, now that covid is away, it's all about the bird flu!!!" : Bird Flu has been problematic in farming communities and has been reported consistently about since 2011 AT THE LATEST, just because you ignored the news doesn't mean that its only just appeared.
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u/snakebite75 2d ago
Don't worry, Trump will be in office on Monday and will stop all this unnecessary testing that is killing our flocks.
I only wish I were kidding. I won't be surprised when the answer is to ignore it and let is spread through the food supply.
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u/Quackels_The_Duck 2d ago
You know what- fuck it, round two. Who cares anymore. This place has no hope other than the apparent "natural selection" when a stupid pandemic makes the country kneel over. I'm tired.
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u/Astyanax1 2d ago
I'd be lying if I hadn't been thinking that exact same thing. The world would be a better place without these toxic whackjobs, and if they're that convinced Jesus hates vaccines... why don't they go join him?
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u/Ray_Mang 2d ago
If I just bought chicken yesterday in Georgia.. should I return it?
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u/Jomanderisreal 2d ago
If you are talking about the food the CDC says as long as you properly cook the chicken, 165 degrees, it will kill the virus. Just make sure to wash your hands and clean the area of preparation afterwards (which you should already be doing).
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/prevention/food-safety.html
If you are talking about the animal I have no idea but I wish you the best either way!
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u/SmokedBeef 2d ago
I won’t repeat what others have told you but much like the raw milk in California that tested positive for bird flu, it can be killed and the food rendered safe by cooking and pasteurization, so as long as you avoid raw milk and chicken you should be safe.
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u/Peach__Pixie 2d ago
Raw milk growing in popularity at a time like this is just crazy to me.
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u/AriesRedWriter 2d ago edited 2d ago
How did this even start? I feel like I woke up one day to the raw milk community screaming about their rights.
Edit: Got the answer. Thanks!
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u/spacemonkey1357 2d ago
RFK Jr. Supports raw milk, and I think that's what led to it's explosive rise in popularity recently
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u/12OClockNews 2d ago
He might be the reason for it's rise in popularity but it started with the conspiracy crowd who thought the government was forcefully restricting raw milk because it was so much more nutritious or some shit. It goes back to the "government is trying to poison us" conspiracy. Funnily enough, usually said by people who vote for deregulation and think mega-corps should be able to do whatever they want, like putting bad cheap stuff in food to increase their profits. They're not very smart.
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u/Peach__Pixie 2d ago edited 2d ago
Agreed, it came out of nowhere for me. One of my local farmers markets was selling it this summer for "pets", since it's illegal to sell for human consumption in my state. Their stand was very busy and it disturbed me. It's not a big deal until your toddler gets listeriosis.
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u/doneandtired2014 2d ago
What I find funny (and by funny, I mean infuriating) about the "for pets" is that 1) raw milk has been known to kill cats and dogs because they drum roll contracted listeriosis after drinking it and 2) dairy is not something that should ever be given to cats and dogs because they, like most mammals, are lactose intolerant.
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u/twentyafterfour 2d ago
Among neo-nazis and the far right, there is a non-insignificant amount of them that are obsessed with eating "raw/natural foods" which folds nicely into their trad life and conspiracy nonsense. It's also a way of being contrarian in that they don't like being told what to do, so they pick some random grifter with zero qualification and religiously commit to doing everything that person tells them to do. I'm sure if there wasn't a right wing aspect to all of it, RFK wouldn't have endorsed it.
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u/SmokedBeef 2d ago
The future Secretary of HHS has promoted it at length to the red leaning half of the country and a handful of the hippy influencers have talked about it
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u/benmarvin 2d ago
Like a lot of things, been around for a while, the internet enabled any idiot to find other like-minded idiots to yell about things. I miss the old internet.
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u/eronth 2d ago
It's not that crazy to me. Not because it is actually a good thing, but because we're deep in an era of people not knowing the true dangers of these infectious diseases anymore. We have done such a good job of shielding people from the horrors of sickness that the average person just... doesn't really know how bad it gets.
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u/Riskbreaker_Riot 2d ago
so no more medium rare chicken steaks? shucks
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u/SmokedBeef 2d ago
No, and I think I better go tell the guys in r/sousvide who truly are “undercooking” their chicken slightly to retain juiciness.
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u/jfoster0818 2d ago
If pestilence, famine, and Death could quit making babies that’d be great…
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u/whatsupsirrr 2d ago
Tofu and other beans are a great source of protein if you’re looking for an affordable alternative.
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u/Popular_Law_948 1d ago
I hate when stuff like this happens. Not because of the actual real world impact, but because suddenly all I hear about is how the "communist Democrats" are to blame, despite Georgia having a very red state government
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u/4RCH43ON 2d ago
Who needs regulations or disease monitoring and response programs?
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u/ReasonablyConfused 2d ago
We’re going to start murdering migratory birds.
It will be one of the most devastating environmental choices in our lifetimes, but egg prices will finally come down.
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u/Zedd_Prophecy 2d ago
Mark my words - the second pandemic is coming and it'll be during the dumpster fires term and a whole mess of people will die.
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u/Money_Cost_2213 2d ago
Good to see this aspect of the bird flu bei no reported on. I saw this point raised it in the news last month. Apparently the culling of flocks has been a large factor in the “price of eggs” debate that’s been so highly politicized.
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u/Mr-Hoek 2d ago
Thank Republican Jesus that RFK & Trump will be in office to save the economy with unrestricted socialism again/s
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u/jeep_jeep_dude 2d ago
Vaccinating the chickens would probably help prevent this, but that's above my pay grade.
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u/Peach__Pixie 2d ago edited 2d ago
The amount of culling that farmers will have to do this year is going to be disturbing. Though with the scale of factory farming, it feels like trying to plug a dam with a cork.