One million chickens culled

----or the fear porn starts again

In spring 2024, there was a public government consultation on the registration of all domestic birds. Until then, only poultry flocks of more than 50 birds were required to be registered, but on the grounds of helping to tackle avian flu, the consultation considered making compulsory the registration even of single ducks, chickens or indeed any other bird, the only proposed exemption being for birds such as budgerigars kept entirely indoors. Not surprisingly, the majority of respondents (75%) favoured maintaining the status quo, and perhaps even less surprisingly, the consultation was ignored and the new regulations were introduced in October 2024.

At the time of the consultation, I was talking to some friends who kept 5 chickens in their back garden, providing eggs for themselves or lucky neighbours. They were quite relaxed, saying it’s very easy to register online so no big deal. But with my Covid-awareness hat on, I was thinking: step 2 will be instructions to keep chickens indoors (or enclose the entire chicken run), during a surge in ‘cases’; step 3 will be culling of entire flocks if one bird is sick; step 4 will PCR testing of healthy birds and then culling flocks with any (false?) positive results. All with a background of developing mRNA human vaccines for a disease of no consequence and despite the known and severe adverse reactions from covid-19 mRNA vaccines still coming to light.

Well, as expected, it has only taken three months from implementation of Step 1 (compulsory registration) to now be at step 3, a cull of one million chickens at a family farm in Shropshire. The whole England and Scotland entered an Avian Influenza Prevention Zone (AIPZ) at midday on Saturday, with all of Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire and large parts of Yorkshire now in the dreaded

Figure 1. Avian Influenza Control Zones in force, 26th January 2025

Mandatory Housing Avian Influenza Prevention Zone (MHAIPZ), with bird owners across the country encouraged to check where they are on the interactive map.

I don’t know about anyone else, but it sounds eerily like covid lockdown Tiers 1-4. With a nice interactive map to scare you as the threat waxes and wanes. Interestingly, Wales is not in there yet despite the 3 km protection Zone around the aforementioned farm in Shropshire ending less than 1km from the Welsh border, but perhaps the Welsh know that wild birds can fly.

The real question is are these measures necessary and do they actually work?

The risk of the current variety of avian flu to the general public is currently non-existent. For 46 cases reported in the US, 45 occurred in farm workers, 20 from poultry farms and 25 dairy cattle farmers. All 20 infected poultry farm workers had been specifically involved in culling flocks of poultry. Despite a very high viral exposure, the workers were not seriously ill, conjunctivitis or ‘pink-eye’ being the commonest manifestation but also some with typical ‘flu-like symptoms of fever and achy muscles. None of the 45 were hospitalised and none died. The only one patient for whom there was no known exposure, was an adult with multiple underlying conditions presented to the emergency department with acute chest pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and weakness, without respiratory symptoms. The patient was hospitalized and treated with oseltamivir on the basis of a positive influenza A screening test at presentation. The clinical course was uncomplicated, and the patient was discharged home 3 days after admission and A(H5N1) was confirmed.

Peter McCullough recorded this interview in July last year in which he points out that culling whole flocks of chickens never gets rid of the problem, as another group of infected wild fowl will fly over and infect your new stock. Allowing flocks to obtain natural immunity would likely result in the current wave burning itself out as has been the case in the past. The only thing of which you can be sure is an increase in the price of eggs!

Perhaps most worrying, as he discusses, is the move to fund Moderna to make a new avian flu modified mRNA vaccine for human use. So far in Britain, the UKHSA has ordered 5 million doses of a standard technology vaccine against H5N8, heaven knows if that is a good use of public money (it's a totally different strain of influenza A for starters).

All this feels somewhat menacing, with India Times running this headline in December:

Vaccine researcher Peter Hotez warns multiple viruses could strike America right after Trump takes office

In the UK, the culling of one million chickens in Shropshire feels uncomfortably close to Module 4 of the UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry, where we are hearing everyday of the triumph of the vaccine programme which saved countless lives and from which adverse events are tragic but of course extremely rare. Increasing vaccine confidence and preparing for the next pandemic seem to be the inevitable recommendations that will flow from Baroness Hallet’s pen, perhaps with some improvements to the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme for the unfortunate few.