Some thoughts on ill birds. Now we've all been told how we stand on the edge of oblivion; like an old Hitchcock movie, H5N1 is coming. Thankfully this time the birds aren't evil and thus far there hasn't bee a declaration of war against all the free fowl of the world.

My choice of words is deliberate. These are free animals (as much as any of us are free); they go where they please, mate with who they want, die from predation and rot. Their caged cousins on the other hand are not free and are actually the problem. You see humans will never catch H5N1 from a random duck or flamingo flying around covering huge continental distances. These birds don't like spending time with humans and are, for the most part, scared of us; unless we're stupid enough to poke at their corpses we're in the clear. Let the worms do their jobs.

But these free fowl are the carriers of H5N1 which particularly likes our farmed fowl. And we humans like to keep large numbers of birds like chickens and turkeys in close quarters, medicated and mutilated where possible against diseases and self-destructive behaviour but always close to the dinner table. H5N1, like tuberculosis, loves bodies in close quarters because it can be easily transmitted between hosts. And when the infection spreads the chances of mutation are greatly increased including the chance of jumping species to the planets first urban (read highly concentrated) species: homo sapiens.

So in fact it's our love affair with Thanksgiving turkey, chicken wings and chicken nuggets that's going to do us in in the end. More and more everyone on earth is entitled to meat; meat consumption is the sign of an advanced developed society. Greater demand requires greater production in huge industrial farms targeted like smart bombs by H5N1.

So blame our lack of self control and the Canada Food Guide for our predicament. One of those four food groups has a dark side called disease--can you guess which one? Are you ever going to die from bread, broccoli or beans? I doubt it.

As far as I can tell, the argument outlined here is not being made. The potential for bird flu killing millions is our fault. What can you do? Plenty. Tone down the meat consumption and reduce the demand fuelling concentrated bird farming. Don't cut it out entirely if you don't want to but realize that meat is murder (your murder by tiny microbes).