Has it also been affecting the price of chicken? I know that egg prices were a sticking point from the election so there’s a focus on that, but if it’s an avian flu that’s affecting chickens, would that also cause the price of any chicken product to go up? I feel like I haven’t heard anything around meat prices going up.
I was trying to find some Cornish hens at Walmart today - no luck, but the chicken prices in general didn’t seem higher.
I wonder if it could be related to the difference between the way broiler versus layers are treated and kept. I think a broiler you usually kill after three months - they’re bred to get huge fast, and their bodies will literally fall apart if you allow them to live too long. (Volunteered for a while at a vegan rescue that took in chickens that fell off trucks, etc - they’d end up losing lots of feathers and looked terrible as they got older).
Layers I think are going to be kept in the conditions most conducive to spreading disease. You’re not killing them quickly, you’re trying to cram as many in a tiny space and keeping them alive as long as they’ll continue laying.
TL;DR: I suspect that we kill off the chickens we eat too fast for the disease to spread.
I think this is the answer. It can take a hen several months to start laying; meat chickens are typically harvested in six to twelve weeks.
I’ve heard a few similar theories.
Not only do meat-varieties have shorter life than egg-varieties (I think egg-varieties take longer to lay their first egg than meat-varieties get total), but there are also many more egg-layers at each facility.
Also, the locations of the facilities relative to migration routes or windstreams may be playing a role. I’ve heard the egg facilities are more concentrated around migration routes, so they’re more likely to get contaminated.
It’s a good question / interesting topic - but a terrible situation otherwise from non-academic standpoints
What humanity has done to chickens is pretty messed up honestly.