
To stop a virus, California has euthanized more than 1.2M birds - pseudolus
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-virulent-newcastle-disease-outbreak-in-southern-california-20190607-story.html
======
ourmandave
1.2 million to stop a virus?

That's called Just Getting Started in Iowa.

5.3 million Iowa laying hens to be destroyed in bird flu outbreak

[https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/20...](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2015/04/20/avian-
flu-chicken-eggs/26094811/)

~~~
dmix
[]

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads into regional flamewar.

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fpgaminer
Thousands of people, from the researches, to the authorities, to the workers
in the field, are suffering this trauma ten fold. Imagine yourself, as part of
your job, having to go to someone's house and murder their chickens, while
they scream and cry?

Now picture yourself doing that every day, 8 hours a day, for months on end.
Imagine being the person giving the orders to kill. The researcher advising
it.

But this article doesn't focus on that tragedy. It doesn't tell the story of
those heroes who are trying to _save_ billions of animals.

These actions are necessary. The article doesn't even argue against that, and
no one in their right mind would think that California and all of its workers
are going out of their way to spend hundreds of millions of dollars just to
kill people's chickens.

We know what happens when diseases get out of control. Whole species are wiped
out. It's happened before, and it can happen again. We eat hundreds of
millions of chickens a year in California already; 1.2 million is a fraction
of a percent. A small price to pay to save the tens of billions of chickens in
the world.

So instead of bringing the spotlight to honor these people having to do the
dirty work to save our animals, we get an article feigning outrage and
showcasing the reckless behavior of a few people.

It's hard for me grind an axe against those families that have had to suffer
through the loss of their animals, even if the killing is for a "good reason".
Humans never fair well at that violent line between emotion and reason.

But there's no two ways about it. Livestreaming the killing of animals on the
internet, and inciting people to spread a deadly disease is reckless. It will
only lead to far more death. You can't call yourself an animal lover and then
tell people to ignore the very real threat of a disease that could wipe out
billions of animals. The disease doesn't care whether that chicken is food or
your family pet. It doesn't care that about your likes on facebook. It doesn't
care about how much your care for your animals. It is here to kill, brutally
and efficently, for no reason at all. I can't imagine an evil greater than
disease, no matter how much distrust you may have for people.

I suppose I'm just frustrated by the multitude of spotlights the media is
willing to shine on irrational human behavior. There's a story, just as tragic
and beautiful in its own way, to be told by those on the other side of this
fabricated controversy, but this article ignores that. The title of the
article asks "Is it reckless or necessary?" The euthanisia was necessary. This
article was reckless.

~~~
new_guy
Ok, now substitute 'humans' for 'chickens', 'children' for 'animals' etc and
re-read what you just wrote.

~~~
fpgaminer
I appreciate your point, but I don't think it's applicable.

Yes, if one were to substitute humans into my comment, then it'd sound like I
was advocating for nazi-esque holocausts.

Obviously I'm not, and the two are not the same. We don't raise and eat humans
for food, so any arguments about livestock are clearly different than the
equivalent arguments about humans.

And we have better strategies for humans anyway. We expend vast fortunes to
develop vaccines; we can quarantine people; we can restrict travel; etc. All
of those are strategies we use and are effective _for_humans_ to prevent the
spread of disaster diseases.

But none of that is applicable to livestock. We aren't willing to spend the
vast fortunes required to develop and vaccinate tens of billions of animals.
Quarantine isn't effective. We can't communicate with animals. Etc.

At the end of the day, people expend millions of dollars to save a single
human life. The people willing to spend that much on a pet is vanishingly
small. Let alone livestock. There are clearly distinctions here which preclude
a simple substitution of "human" for "chicken" in any of these arguments.

~~~
CriticalCathed
Human beings may pretend there's a difference out of moral convenience, but in
fact there isn't any difference at all. All there is is the lie that comforts
conscience.

For what it is worth, I think that culling millions of these animals is the
smart move. I also believe that it is a small part of a larger evil; we as a
species are committing industrialized murder on the scale of hundreds of
billions a year.

~~~
etaioinshrdlu
Is murder on a smaller scale okay? Some animals eat other animals. Maybe the
natural world has no moral values and it's actually humans who have morals...

~~~
CriticalCathed
I think that what applies to a cougar or a bear or a chimpanzee or some other
predator animal applies to humans. It is the natural course of things. It's
why I still eat animal meat.

But it is one thing to kill an animal to eat it, or to kill another person to
eat what he has, in the course of survival. It is another thing entirely to
construct an elaborate global mechanized system in which we impersonally
breed, grow, and wantonly murder animals on the scale of hundreds of billions.
The entire process from fertilization to slaughter to grocery sterilized and
clean, the majority of the citizens in industrialized nations never have to
feel the moral weight of the acts done in their name. They never have to
consider the perspectives of their quarry, of the lives they end to further
their own. All the gifts that we have cognitively above the rest of the
animals come with, I think, the burden of knowledge. We have the ability to
see before and after our actions, to see what effect we have on every other
living and unliving thing.

When I think about what made the holocaust evil -- it wasn't the killing. We
make war, and justify it, endlessly. So surely it isn't actually the killing
that bothers us deep in our consciences.

What made it different was the industrial scale, and perhaps equally horrific,
the way the act was done in the name of the people without their true
knowledge or consent. They never even had the chance to justify it; because
through the technology we developed the citizenry didn't have to feel a single
effect of the acts taken in their name. They never had to be the ones to pull
the trigger. They only had to sit unseeing and unfeeling and unthinking, numb
and dumb, while mass murder happened only miles from their homes.

So yes. Clearly murder is okay. If only we sit and consider the acts that
sustain us and then judge whether that suffering is equivalent to the value we
extract from it.

I think if everyone truly understood what was happening they would not
tolerate it so easily.

~~~
etaioinshrdlu
This is a very reasonable point of view to me.

------
OrgNet
Picture subtitles in Spanish? something wrong with my browser?

> Los manifestantes observan cómo los funcionarios limpian pollos sacrificados
> en Mira Loma, California (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Google's translation: Protesters observe how officials clean up slaughtered
chickens in Mira Loma, California (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

> Los pollos de Les Kanawah están programados para ser sacrificados en Mira
> Loma, California (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Google's translation: Les Kanawah chickens are scheduled to be slaughtered in
Mira Loma, California (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

~~~
dietr1ch
"Los pollos (...) están programados para ser sacrificados (...)"

BTW, that's some awful Spanish. It reads like the chicken were robots
programmed to be sacrificed because the subject of the scheduling/programming
was inadvertently changed from the slaughter to the chickens :P

~~~
ASalazarMX
It's correct Spanish, it just throws off IT people because we use the term
mostly for computer programming.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/JUfGx](http://archive.is/JUfGx)

------
proy24
I wouldn't be surprised if the virus was human induced....similar to how the
mad cow disease was caused by people feeding cattle a mix of cattle bones and
meat.

I hope future generations look at our monstrosities and squirm in horror at
how cruel and barbaric their ancestors were.

~~~
FreeFull
The thing about mad cow disease is that it's a prion disease, which operate
very differently from viral and bacterial diseases. Prion diseases can just
appear out of nowhere, and can be spread by consumption or contact with
affected tissue/fluids. Viruses don't appear from nowhere but are rather
subject to evolution. The way humans do make the spread of viral diseases
worse is by cramming lots of animals together. So while humans aren't at fault
for the existence of the virus itself, they can be at fault for its spread. It
seems though that Newcastle disease is hard to control.

~~~
proy24
Yes a prion disease that is caused by forced cannibalism in animals. I
understand, viruses evolve over time whereas prions are mutations of
proteins...but my point is people are often directly or indirectly related to
the cause and then they slaughter animals by thousands or even millions as in
this case to cover their cause. PS: Not a very scientific argument but my
general feeling. No need for the downvotes.

~~~
autokad
we prevent many diseases, we help many others, both directly and indirectly.
its impossible to disambiguate things. Its almost as if assigning blame to
something bad that happened is a pointless endeavour.

------
pfortuny
Turns out killing is now called euthanasia.

~~~
manfredo
Rectangle vs. square. Euthanasia is a subset of all killing. It has the
connotation of a medically supervised killing, usually done for reasons other
than punitive measures. If your dog is sick with some incurable and painful
condition do you go the vet to get killed or to get euthanized? Both are
correct in a literal sense, but the connotation of the latter better describes
the situation.

~~~
pfortuny
Killing a non-suffering animal is never euthanasia: it is eu because it is
“sweet”. Otherwise it is just thanatos: death.

No ned to sweeten something which is not bitter.

~~~
manfredo
> Killing a non-suffering animal is never euthanasia

These animals were exposed to a fatal virus. I suppose it would be more humane
to let them live until they exhibit sings of the disease, but this would lead
to faster spread of the virus because infected birds have more time to
transmit it. Testing every individual bird is logistically impossible, so
culling those populations in infected areas is the only feasible way to stop
the spread of disease.

> it is eu because it is “sweet”. Otherwise it is just thanatos: death.

My point is that drawing a distinction between these things is nonsensical.

Executed. Put down. Murdered. Euthanized. Slaughtered. All these words fall
under the umbrella of meaning "to kill" but they all have distinct meanings
about the circumstances of the killing. Since this is an intentional killing
for medical reasons, euthanasia is the most accurate word to use. You could
say "slaughtered" but that would incorrectly indicate that these animals were
killed for meat consumption. You could say "executed" but that would
incorrectly imply that these animals were killed as some sort of punishment.
You could just say "killed" but that is less specific and does not indicate
that this killing was done deliberately for medical reasons.

> No ned to sweeten something which is not bitter.

It doesn't "sweeten" anything, the article makes it clear that the owners of
these birds are not happy to have them euthanized.

~~~
dmos62
I think you might be misinterpreting parent. He's just talking etymology, and
he has a point. The eu- prefix means good/pleasant/easy, the rest of the word
means death. So euthanasia, as a category of killing, implies that it's giving
a good death, where otherwise there would be a bad death. A synonym would be
mercy-killing. So you can argue that if the animal is not yet ill, it can't be
euthanasia. Of course you could imagine non-standard scenarios where killing
someone healthy might be considered euthanasia, like intentionally inhaling
fire (thus rendering self unconscious) when you expect to burn to death. We're
just talking semantics, not debating choices.

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rajekas
Why is it that when it comes to nonhuman beings we turn to violence first?
Then there's the hiding of the violence behind scientized euphemisms for bonus
points.

~~~
luke0016
Money.

