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I like chicken, whatever way it is prepared. Over today's lunch (stewed chicken over rice and beans, my third favorite meal), I figured that I probably eat from 1.5 to 2 chickens each week. I'm guessing that, on average, people in the U.S. probably eat at least one chicken each week (since I'm sure that few people like chicken as much as I do). So, a typical person in the U.S. would consume about 52 chickens each year. I think it's fair to say that there are about 250,000 chicken-eaters in the U.S., allowing for vegetarians, vegans, and small children who don't consume much food. That comes to a total of about 1.3 billion chickens consumed in the U.S. every year. That's a lot of chickens.
Considering the cramped conditions in which commercial chickens are grown, and the rate at which birds can become infected, I think it's obvious that if one chicken in a factory becomes ill with bird flu, the entire stock would probably be lost. If this occurs in a number of factories, the availability of chicken will drop and prices for chickens and their parts will soar. People all over the country will have to do without chicken. Such a serious disruption of the chicken supply could send the U.S. economy, which has already been weakened, into a tailspin.
So limiting the spread of bird flu really is a serious matter.
Next topic for consideration: do chickens have souls? If they do, we're going to have a lot to answer for.
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