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“Eat a hen and the penguin will get it!” Seems like one thing straight out of a film, proper?
However this isn’t some corny Hollywood state of affairs—it’s a real-life hostage scenario. Penguins in Antarctica are struggling and dying from a superspreader illness that Massive Meat helped propagate in what scientists assume might be one of many worst ecological disasters ever.
That’s why PETA is stepping in with an pressing public message:
PETA’s new billboard will confront residents throughout the U.S. with a important connection: Consuming chickens and their eggs is detrimental to the whole planet—and it’s excessive time to cease.
Farms Accelerated the Unfold of a Lethal Illness—Now It’s In every single place
Hen farms create the right circumstances for harmful pathogens to flourish, and up to now three years, the H5N1 hen flu virus has executed simply that. Meat business executives allowed it to tear via the continental U.S. beginning in 2021 regardless of epidemiologists’ repeated alarms. However why are farms such hotbeds of pestilence?
Farms that home animals are illness incubators the place animals are confined to filthy enclosures so cramped that they typically can’t even flip round or lie down comfortably. Farmers preserve hens exploited for his or her eggs in small cages, and so they warehouse chickens killed for his or her flesh wing-to-wing in huge sheds. Even farms with “cage-free” or different humane-washed certifications topic these delicate birds to unsanitary, depressing circumstances.
Animals saved captive on farms are in virtually fixed contact with pathogens via feces, contaminated air, blood, you title it. And though farmers declare to “handle illness” (together with by killing hundreds of thousands of flu-infected birds inside the previous yr), all they care about are their revenue margins.
How Dangerous Is Hen Flu?
The H5N1 hen flu is a nightmare. One lethal and extremely pathogenic type of it causes multisystem organ failure and might kill upward of 90% of the chickens it infects inside 48 hours.
Not solely does the virus that causes hen flu unfold rapidly amongst chickens and different birds, it might additionally infect mammals. Hen flu has killed round 500,000 seabirds and 20,000 sea lions in Chile and Peru since 2021, and in January 2024 it killed a polar bear in Alaska. Now that the virus is killing penguins in Antarctica, humanity’s subsequent steps are important in mitigating its rising loss of life toll.
Human Greed Is Costing Birds Their Lives—and We’re Subsequent
In people, hen flu causes extreme pneumonia quickly adopted by loss of life and has killed about 50% of these it has contaminated. Thankfully, the virus that causes it doesn’t transmit simply between us—but.
Human well being continues to be reeling from the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of which we don’t totally perceive, and an analogous occasion is the very last thing we want. With hen flu raging around the globe and extra viral mutations of concern cropping up, we have to take drastic measures to stop one other pandemic.
What Can You Do to Keep away from Hen Flu?
Since crowded farms and filthy slaughterhouses are instrumental to the transmission and mutation of the hen flu virus, our greatest wager at curbing its unfold is to cease consuming eggs and hen flesh. Changing them with animal-free options is the one option to be secure.
In the event you’re nervous about making the swap, now we have your again! Our FREE vegan starter equipment has the whole lot you’ll want, from recipes and tips about consuming out to well being info, and might information you towards a more healthy, happier, and longer life—one which doesn’t assist the cruelty, local weather destruction, and illness dangers of elevating and consuming animals:
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