"I believe I do.
I believe it's true.
I believe what they tell me to."
Tom Paxton
1. Bernard Matthews will resume production tomorrow morning at 9:00 am inside the quarantine zone by special licence from the government.
It doesn't matter that all those in positions of power and profit tell the public that it is OK to restart the Bernard Matthews' Suffolk County operation. If the public perceives that there is an unacceptable risk in crossing the quarantine line to enter the quarantine zone, the public will simply refuse to buy any turkey products because they cannot be certain of its source. That will hurt everyone. It might be very difficult for Bernard Matthews to remain in a subdued operational mode, but they are now creating a problem for the whole turkey and poultry industry in this country by jumping back into the production at this location.
This also shows the danger which accrues to large corporate factory farming production when this kind of problem occurs. With many more smaller operations there is greater viability in the marketplace and a reduced risk overall from any one producer. Those who are impacted by this kind of problem do not pose a large threat making such haste to return to production necessary. It is quite unseemly to say the least. It's one thing to see the government and Bernard Matthews doing all it can to make certain the public is protected, but it is quite another to reverse that and appear to be prematurely jumping into production for profit with tax revenues to the government.
It does not seem reasonable and rational to me for this activity to take place. I don't care what those in power might say. I do not believe that they offer any assurances which can be trusted by the public when there is a rush to production in an area where there might be a stray virus or two lingering somewhere in some corner. I think that the whole process should be slowly and carefully investigated and restarted after all the facts are known about what happened and how. If they haven't sterilised every square centimeter, H5N1 avian flu could enter the human food chain with the risk of a mutation occurring in humans making it a human disease.
BBC News Monday, 12 February 2007, 18:28 GMT
Bird flu farm to resume slaughter
 Bird flu was confirmed earlier this month at the plant in Holton |
Bernard Matthews is to resume slaughtering and processing turkeys at the Suffolk farm where bird flu was found earlier this month.
Live birds will be brought in under a special licence which will allow them to cross into the exclusion zone.
Bird flu was confirmed at the plant in Holton on 3 February, and 159,000 turkeys were culled.
Environment Secretary David Miliband said he had been "guided by science" in allowing production to resume.
The turkeys will be brought in to the factory from 0900 GMT on Tuesday, from the 50 farms Bernard Matthews operates around the UK.
Mr Miliband said: "We deliberately created an independent scientific advisory body - the Food Standards Agency.
"The question that I asked them is: Is it sensible?
"And they say yes, it is sensible because they investigated all of the aspects of this slaughterhouse and they believe them to be of an appropriate standard."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6355489.stm
2. The downside risk (worst case scenario) from making an error in judgement from the risk assessment is so great in its potential catastrophic consequences as descrbied below that it is necessary to take extra precautions which are not being done as noted above.
The Guardian Monday, 12th February 2007
UK 'underestimating' bird flu danger
By David Batty and agencies
Measures to prevent the spread of avian flu at a farm in Suffolk.
Photograph: Jamie McDonald/Getty
The impact of a bird flu pandemic in the UK has been underestimated and more work must be done to minimise the number of deaths, a health protection expert warned today.
Professor Sir Roy Anderson, chairman of infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College, London, said the H5N1 virus could infect the UK "very, very quickly" if it mutated into a form able to spread easily among humans.
Speaking at a flu pandemic conference at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, Prof Anderson said: "I do not think people have got to grips with the magnitude of this problem. We have had two years at it. A lot of problems have been sorted out but there is a lot more to do."
. . .
Prof Anderson said the fatality rate of the virus in infected humans was one of the highest ever seen; there have been 166 deaths from 272 cases - a 61% case fatality rate. He said: "It's a very unpleasant virus when it gets into humans."
Professor Maria Zambon, head of the respiratory virus unit at the Health Protection Agency, said avian flu had difficulty replicating in human cells, but the more people who were infected, the more likely the virus was to mutate into an easily transmittable form.
"The virus is evolving rapidly and sooner or later the right constellation of mutations may occur to make a virus that is capable of both transmission and onward transmission in humans," she said.