Are Asian poultry farming practices as bad as New Scientist suggests?
Some would argue that vaccinating birds against avian flu is not a bad practice at all – many said at the time of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in Britain that vaccination was preferable to slaughter. But the problem is that if the vaccine is not precisely right, it may save the birds at the cost of allowing the virus to continue spreading. When it reaches unvaccinated birds, it kills them. In addition, allowing the virus to continue multiplying in vaccinated birds increases the risk that it will evolve into a form that can infect humans and spread in the human population.
