Experts say current US outbreak is unlikely to end without intervention with further mutation of virus likely

Summary

A new H5N1 bird flu variant has become “endemic in cows,” with cases detected in Nevada and Arizona, raising concerns about human transmission.

Experts warn that without intervention, the outbreak will continue, but Trump has cut CDC staff and halted flu vaccination campaigns.

The virus’s spread coincides with a severe flu season, increasing the risk of mutation.

The administration has also stopped sharing flu data with the WHO and shifted its containment strategy away from culling infected poultry, raising fears of inadequate response.

  • NSRXN
    -2•11 hours ago

    Raising plants to feed animals so we can eat the animals is less efficient than raising plants for us to eat.

    if that were the situation, you might be right. but since we actually feed livestock mostly crop seconds and byproducts, it’s actually a conservation of resources in a lot of situations, with minimal competition with human food sources

    • @[email protected]
      6•10 hours ago

      1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics

      https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013

      we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.

      https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115

      • NSRXN
        0•8 hours ago

        your shepon paper shows a great deal of spinach being fed to chickens. why would it be fed to chickens if it were suitable for human consumption? I don’t actually know, but my guess is that it is not suitable for human consumption, and that is why it is fed to chickens. that’s a conservation of resources. the potatoes fed to cattle are likely the same.

        this paper doesn’t discuss this discrepancy at all. I have to say I don’t find the analysis very compelling.

      • NSRXN
        -1•8 hours ago

        soybean cakes, which production can be considered as main driver or land-use, represent 4% of the global livestock feed intake.

        you clipped this out of the abstract, but it’s highly relevant to what I’ve been saying: this is a byproduct of pressing soybeans for oil. if we didn’t feed it to livestock, it would be industrial waste.

      • NSRXN
        0•8 hours ago

        do you have the full papers? I can’t really examine these claims from the links you provided.