With the national health crisis, food debauchery, and farm exploitation suddenly jumping to headlines via RFK, Jr., numerous people have offered solutions but nothing I've seen truly gets to the heart of the problem.

Recently RFK, Jr. gave his recipe but in general, it's yet another request for government intervention in these fields (pun intended). Capping drug prices, prohibiting research grants from going to people with conflicts of interest, and reforming crop subsidies to incentivize healthier alternatives all sound nice. Eliminating SNAP (formerly food stamps) from being spent on high fructose corn syrup drinks ($9 billion annually) sounds good too. 

Who can disagree with requiring nutrition courses in medical schools and demanding government research grants go toward holistic and alternative health approaches? All of this sounds good in theory, but how? Goodness, we now have official government findings that Cheerios and Fruit Loops are more nutritious than beef. Who is going to make the kinds of U-turns within the bureaucracies that such changes would require?

I remember well when President Obama was elected and Michelle put a garden on the White House lawn. My friends in the organic farming community thought the country would enter ecological farming nirvana...until someone said, "Remember, 10 miles of USDA offices will not change." Therein lies the Achilles’ heel of all this nice-sounding rhetoric.

Epoch Times carried a full-page column by pediatric Dr. Joel Warsh last week titled "America's Health Crisis: Expanding on RFK Jr.'s Plan to Make America Healthy Again." As much as his thoughts may sound good, they still suffer from the same old government interventionist mindset. He wants a "National Emergency Declaration of Health." Can you imagine the wrangling, jet fuel, focus groups, and lobbying that would occur with such an initiative?

He suggests we should "recreate the food pyramid" with good food and pastured meat and eggs on the bottom instead of the top. You'd have to move the entire climate change, cow farts narrative to make this happen. Then yet more government mandates: corporations with more than 100 employees "should be required to offer wellness programs that include fitness classes, nutritional counseling, and mental health services." Oh my, we've now exchanged one nanny for another.

He wants health education taught in all public schools, regulations banning junk food ads when children watch TV, and subsidies for organic and transitioning farms. This is just a sampling of his list and much of it would indeed be good...if it were possible. But it's not. Simply put, to get a legislative and bureaucratic push on these kinds of agendas is insanity according to Albert Einstein's definition: "trying to solve a problem with the same thinking that created it." I believe we are where we are in all these areas due to government micro-management; asking for government to get us out is asking for all the agencies, all the politicians, all the lobbyists, all the Happy Meals addicts, all the Chick-fil-A cultists, to do a 180. Ain't gonna happen.

So you ask "Well, it's easy to be negative. What's your solution?" I think when we engage in these kinds of same-thinking solutions, we obfuscate the simple and consistent argument that carries the most weight.

While my plan may not sound doable either - and I admit on the surface that's true - I think it takes a higher philosophically consistent road. And instead of trading one regulation for another, one bureaucrat for another, one agency for another, it cuts to the heart of the problem and offers a more defensible position. The most disempowering mindset is one that assumes the only solutions are from the government. Private certification, independent research, and individual choice offer much better solutions. Here we go.

1. Pass Congressman Thomas Massie's Constitutional amendment: "The right of the people to grow food and to purchase food from the source of their choice shall not be infringed, and Congress shall make no law regulating the production and distribution of food products which do not move across state lines." 
   
   Thousands and thousands of farmers, and non-farmers, wish to engage in neighborly food commerce but current regulations prohibit these transactions. Try selling raw milk in Virginia. Try making a chicken pot pie and selling it to a neighbor. Try selling a pound of sausage from a home-butchered backyard pig to a neighbor. It's all illegal. And if a state wants to make it legal, the federal government intercedes to recriminalize it. 
   
   This simple addition of standing for consumers to exercise food choice as voluntary, consenting adults with their farm neighbors would completely revolutionize America's food system. Many people want to buy alternative food. Farmers want to sell. All of this illegal food can be given away, but just can't be sold. What is it about exchanging money that suddenly turns a benevolent morsel into a hazardous substance? The centralization and opaqueness in America's food system is upon us precisely because of government overreach. If you want to buy at WalMart, fine, enjoy the government oversight. But if I want to go to a neighbor's farm and look around, smell around, and voluntarily opt out of the federal government's fraternity, I should be able to choose my microbiome's fuel. How could anyone oppose that?
2. Eliminate ALL government intervention in health care. Period. All licensing, all payments, all research. Everything. It's not the government's job, among its enumerated powers, to tell us how to be healthy or fix sickness. Although my wife and I are well beyond the age when people go on Medicare, we have opted not to take it because we refuse to let the government dictate our health protocols. Even though we paid thousands of dollars into these programs over our lifetime, they are fraught with fraud, corruption, and death.
   
   Had there been no Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to broadcast fear-mongering and anti-science and line the pockets of pharmaceutical companies during Covid, not a single additional person would have died. And no, President Trump was not a hero for bringing mRNA jabs to the public quickly. If health really is about "My body, my choice," then let's spread that liberty across the spectrum, not just for the unwanted pregnancy.
   
   If I want to start a hospital for atheist bowlegged Vietnamese and give them an unorthodox concoction, great. I'll either stay in business or go out of business real fast. The only way to inculcate responsible decision-making in a populace--what I call discernment exercise--is to put the onus for bad decisions on the ones who made the decisions. The government agents who demanded injections aren't suffering for the debilitating death their requirements caused. Let us all live or die based on our own sleuthing; that will push us all to seek our truth.
   
   So-called "safety nets" have caused more irresponsible behavior than anyone can imagine. If someone wants to drown in alcohol or drugs, fine. Why should I pay for those decisions? If a philanthropic agency wants to try to rescue folks, wonderful. In fact, without being taxed to death, we'd all have way more money to support the charitable causes of our choice; how about that for a change?
3. Eliminate ALL government intervention in food, welfare, and education. Yes, from SNAP to corn insurance. Get rid of all of it. Right now, my taxes go to a plethora of abhorrent, culture-destroying initiatives. That includes cost sharing for biogas balloons at Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), the school lunch program, and mandatory industry check-off schemes.
   
   And the education component is not a typographical error. From colleges to kindergarten, get the federal government out of education, where most of the country's nonsensical thinking gets planted, watered, and takes root. You'd think if we wanted to battle drugs, we'd shut down the incubator: 70 percent of all first-time drug use occurs in public schools. Remand everything to the states and eliminate the federal Department of Education. 
   
   The nutrient deficiency on our farms and in our food system is largely the result of land grants and other government-subsidized institutions of higher learning. Let them all stand on their feet. The plethora of small colleges going bankrupt is symptomatic of the centralization that inherently follows all government intervention. Big government creates big institutions; you cannot preserve small businesses in a big government environment. The dead zone the size of Rhode Island in the Gulf of Mexico is an environmental disaster facilitated by big government narratives and programs. 
   
   The fuel for nonsense spews forth from the government gusher. Shut off the government intervention and at least you spread out foolishness to smaller entities. Removing federal involvement does not guarantee the right thing, but at least it democratizes idiocy and offers an opportunity for alternatives to see the light of day.

While these three ideas smack of absurdity in our current cultural climate, I suggest they enjoy a purity and consistency of thought that is actually easier to defend than exchanging one federal agency for another. One regulation for another. One rule for another. Instead of switching around the deck chairs on the Titanic, how about we proceed with humility that recognizes nothing is too big to sink? Exchanging one iceberg for another won't get us where we need to go. We need to change course by getting out of the icebergs.

Thank you for considering.

Mainline industrial confinement livestock producers routinely feeding subtherapeutic antibiotics to their animals have been desperate for an alternative for many years. As superbugs like cDiff and MRSA developed, consumer backlash against ubiquitous antibiotic use increased.

When consumer advocacy groups pummeled factory farmers with headlines like “Who’s Drugging Your Dinner?” the industry first denied it was a problem, then actively started looking for alternatives. I remember well when Bill Clinton was elected president and hired a French chef who lauded free range chicken.

In an effort to make fun of the new president, conservative talk show host Pat Buchanan sought an alternative chicken producer to ridicule. He found me, offering the Polyface pastured chicken. As a conservative, I assumed Buchanan would be an enjoyable interview; I had no idea I was being ambushed with a hostile agenda.

His first question was “What makes your chicken different?” I quipped “Ours don’t do drugs.” He followed up with “Why does the industry use drugs?” I answered, “Because it makes them grow faster,” and was getting ready to add more information like, “It keeps them alive in fecal particulate air” but he cut me off.

“What could be wrong with making something grow faster?” he chortled and then cut me off. He had his enjoyment at my expense and thought he’d won the day. But if he’d kept me on, I could have explained that growing fast is not necessarily a good goal. Do we want cancer to grow fast? Inflammation is a result of fast growth. 

Do we want prisons to grow fast? Fentanyl use to grow fast? I can think of a lot of things I’d like to see grow slower. Girls going through puberty at 8 years old due to injecting hormones in livestock is not benevolent growth.

It was such a shocking simplistic ridiculous exchange that I’ve never forgotten it. Suffice it to say that not everyone thinks “drugging your dinner” is the best way to grow meat. These industrial protocols fueled the anti-animal, vegan movement. As the turmoil increased, as well as the studies showing horrific unintended consequences to routine drug use on farms, the search for alternatives kicked into high gear.

The big question in the industry was whether vaccinations could replace antibiotics. The problem was specificity to disease and long development horizons. Then came the breakthrough: mRNA. About 12 years ago the poultry industry began using mRNA. About 5 years ago the pork industry joined and about 2 years ago cattle followed.

Have you noticed the “antibiotic free” messaging from the industry lately? They don’t say “substitute mRNA for antibiotics.” They just say “antibiotic free.” This is one of the most clever-speaks ever invented.

Of course, just like rBGH in dairy cows—remember that?—used for nearly a decade before going on the label—mRNA has been used for some time without widespread knowledge. Dr. Joe Mercola discovered this in the spring of 2023 and alerted Americans that it was already in our meat. I was unaware of it, like almost everyone else.

Since then, the industry has circled the wagons. When testimony in Missouri’s legislature revealed its use in cattle, the industry quickly put out a press release stating mRNA was “not licensed” for use in cattle. This is a common sleight of words. The industry did not say “We aren’t using it;” notice the words: “not licensed.” The obvious inference to the average consumer is that it’s not being used.

But all sorts of exemptions and loopholes exist around drugs. Both experimental and emergency use make an end run around licensing. This was the case with rBGH in dairy cows. The dairy industry didn’t have to disclose its use, on labels or otherwise, due to its “experimental” designation. If you’re thinking what I’m thinking (Pinky and the Brain) this sounds extremely similar to the clever-speak surrounding mRNA use on humans during Covid—experimental and emergency.

The pork industry is likewise fighting back. And to their credit, they should disparage overreach in the opposition, like charges that “Producers are required to inject livestock with mRNA vaccines.” That is not true, and the industry is justified to point it out.

However, it’s a slippery issue. Just like during Covid, you could argue that the federal government did not require anyone to get the mRNA jab (I refuse to call it a vaccine, because it’s not), many people were forced to get it due to paranoia and tyrannical protocols in the workplace, military, etc. So while farmers aren’t required by the government to use mRNA, I guarantee that if you’re a grower for a vertically integrated industrial outfit, if they require mRNA, you’ll use it to keep your contract.

As reported by Paige Carlson in Farm Journal’s PORK, April 9, 2023, “National Pork Board’s Director of Consumer Public Relations, Jason Menke” noted “that the decision to use vaccines and other medical treatments to protect animal health and well-being are made by the farmer under the direction of the herd veterinarian.” This is equivalent to Dr. Anthony Fauci standing at the podium saying he represents science.

If an industry veterinarian says to use it, then we dare not question.

The same article quotes Dr. Kevin Folta, a molecular biologist and professor at the University of Florida, that mRNA technologies “have been in development for decades.” Oh, I thought they suddenly came into being, like some sort of spontaneous divine intervention, in the fall of 2020. He added that “the technology is being maligned in social media, and is now shaping decisions at the level of state legislature.”

Yes, numerous states are considering legislation to require label disclosure of mRNA use. And of course it’s being questioned on social media, dear professor. Have you heard about adverse reactions? And it enters every cell in the body? And we don’t know what will happen 30 years down the road?

The most egregious cavalier dismissal of unintended consequences I’ve experienced revolved around the grand Poobah announcement within credentialed academic scientific circles in the late 1970s that feeding dead cows to cows was a great idea. 

Some farmers, like me, believed in order and not chaos. We couldn’t find a pattern in nature where herbivores eat carrion. We refused to participate in this latest greatest scientific progress and were accused of being Luddites, barbarians, anti-science, anti-progress and a host of other maladies. Lo and behold, 30 years later, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow) reared its ugly head and encompassed the globe in a spasm of unintended consequences. 

Did any of these scientists demand to be fired for such an egregious breach of nature’s trust? No. They didn’t even apologize. Sounds like the National Institutes of Health science-throb Dr. Francis Collins and his Centers for Disease Control accomplice Fauci. 

What a pair. And what a duplicitous, unthinking world that people still follow these nefarious leaders.

Let’s listen to the imminent land grant professor Folta again: “It’s not in your food. It’s a vaccine for the animal that, just like any vaccine, protects the animal from disease.” The obvious required response is a sweet smile and sigh “Aaahh, isn’t that nice? I’m so glad someone is looking out for the animals.” 

Arguably the word vaccine seems more benign than the word antibiotic. Culturally, we tend to think of antibiotic as reactive and vaccine as preventive.

But mRNA is not a vaccine. On our farm, we use no vaccines. In our 60-years-plus commercial farming experience, all livestock diseases are the result of human mismanagement. Yes, we’ve had a few disease outbreaks over many years and countless thousands of animals, but every one has been my fault: lack of sanitation and hygiene, improper diet, uncomfortable habitat. No animal needs mRNA unless it’s subjected to conditions that compromise its immune system. 

Folta the expert says the industry is adequately monitoring animals for negative side effects. He’s giddy over applications across a broad spectrum of diseases. These diseases, of course, become problems when production models assault every habitat and physiological desire of the animal. Like chickens being confined for life to a space half the size of a sheet of notebook paper. Like pigs confined in holding cells on slats, so stressful that their tails must be cut off to make the nubs tender enough to move when a cellmate bites it and would otherwise cannibalize. You get the picture.

As prejudiced and beholden to drug agendas as scientists are, if unintended consequences do in fact rear their ugly head in 20 years, will anyone blame mRNA? No, they’ll say we have some sort of unique fairy-dusted pathogen for which surely a new diabolical concoction from the lab can protect. 

Where are the scientists admonishing “Let’s honor the pigness of the pig and the chickeness of the chicken, take all their stress off, encourage their immune system and emotional joy, give them some fresh air, sunshine, and exercise, along with some pasture salad, and see how that does to prevent disease?”  

No, this is deemed misinformation and hopelessly scientifically backward.

Following the science leads to this, quoting from the PORK article again: “mRNA vaccines are simply another modality that can protect animal health, which results in healthy animals producing the best and safest food products, Folta says, and provides producers with more options to help combat disease.” What could possibly go wrong?

Scientist Folta is incredibly confident: “To have affordable food, we need to have continual innovation in the animal, medical, veterinary space and mRNA vaccines are safe and an effective way to treat the animal that does not change the final product.” 

His ilk brought us hydrogenated vegetable oil, DDT, glyphosate, and the 1979 Food Pyramid with Cheerios and Lucky Charms on the foundation.

When you see the industry messaging, it hews pretty close to the mindset and terminology of the entire establishment Covid problem and cure. Is that what we want on our dinner tables? Asked another way, do we really want Fauci in charge of our food?

What would actually happen if EPA and FDA died tomorrow? Would snake oil suddenly dominate the market?  Would unscrupulous business produce harmful products? And would the rivers suddenly run with poison? Would East Palestine, Ohio happen all over the country?

My first response is this: if bad things happened, at least they wouldn’t be legitimized by government officials. At least bureaucrats, at taxpayer expense, wouldn’t blanket the lapdog media with press releases pooh-poohing folks who dare to questions official narratives. At least if something bad happened, it would have to stand on its own, defend itself, and not have government skirts to hide under.

That new situation alone would infuse would-be bad folks with renewed sobriety. “You mean I can’t call up a regulatory agency peopled with my buddies and get cover? Oh no, I’d better watch my step.” Bad things will always happen, but goodness, folks, we don’t need to finance and encourage them from government cronies; let’s eliminate the bad guys from the taxpayer payroll.

Second, a sudden surge in interest from each of us would stimulate discussions and watchfulness knowing that the future is in our hands, not the government’s. Again, that sounds like la-la land, but when people realize they’re responsible for their situation, they always take interest and get involved. One of the reasons Americans are lackadaisical toward just about everything is because we’ve been lulled into the lie that the government should and can take care of us. It can’t and won’t.

Third, if taxes to pay for all these agencies’ shenanigans were decreased so we the people could keep more of our money, we’d be able to finance all sorts of private watchdogs. Nonprofits like Robert F. Kennedy’s original Waterkeepers and Children’s Defense Fund would take on the big guys and all of us would be able to fund them better. Imagine a Wild West Watchdog culture—how about that?

Common law is still operable. Believe me, pouring poison in a river is not wrong because the EPA says so; it’s wrong because it destroys the commons, and that dates clear back to the Magna Carta. Discovery of atrocities would not be met with quickly-assembled back-room hunker-downs with corporate-government fraternities; it would instead be raw and unprotected executives facing down angry people and passionate barristers fighting for right. 

Fourth, some states would quickly pick up the slack. That way battles would be fought closer to where they occur on a scale small enough to accommodate voters. No doubt some states would step into the void with extremely creative solutions we can’t even imagine because we’ve had no freedom or need to imagine. Much of the problem with these out-of-control agencies is their federal scale.  The constitution never permitted—and still doesn’t permit—this level of oversight at the federal level. It was meant to be a 50-state experiment. 

Finally, without government press releases to run, the media would rediscover its role. During my short journalism tenure, I had stories spiked because my investigations found bad guys among our advertisers or friends of the publisher. “We can’t run that,” said my bosses, protecting their bad boy buddies. But with the ease and speed of publishing today, a plethora of alternative media exists and would sprout more abundantly when new journalists committed to their historic importance.  

Think about issues today gaining traction with no government agency to direct them. The reparations agenda. The reduce-abortions agenda. The school voucher agenda. Tribes always find their niche, and they sure don’t need a government agency to give them legitimacy or power.

What’s the first thing corporate executives say when their bad behavior and actions are discovered? “We complied with all government licenses.” What if they had to face their deeds by themselves? And what if they knew thousands of eyeballs were watching them, from people who couldn’t be wined and dined, bought off and cajoled? Bad corporate executives never get punished. But let some poor farmer put a backhoe in a mud puddle, and he loses his farm. Or some vitamin therapy genius find an answer to a disease and the system beats him into oblivion.

Public awareness about polluted rivers shamed numerous companies long before the EPA happened. And what if Pfizer and Moderna had no FDA protection for rolling out deadly mRNA injections ahead of proper testing? No, America, the sky would not fall without FDA and EPA. What would happen is we would collectively stand taller, freer, and not feel like our only power is through the bureaucratic fraternity.

For this discussion, we picked the EPA and FDA, but the same basic arguments could be offered for virtually all the federal cabinet-level agencies. Does anyone actually think children would not be educated without a federal Department of Education? Or that food would not be produced without a USDA? Really? Are we that impotent and incompetent?

On a scale of 0-100 percent, 100 being good things and 0 being bad things, where would you put EPA and FDA?  50 percent?  20 percent?  80 percent?

Reprinted from Joel Salatin's blog

As the nation suffers through yet another High Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) outbreak, questioning the orthodox narrative is more important than ever. At a time when people are screaming about overpopulation and the world’s inability to feed itself, surely we humans need to figure out how to reduce these kinds of losses.

Numbers change each day, but at the last count about 60 million chickens (mainly laying hens) and turkeys died in the last year. A bit more than a decade ago it was 50 million. Are these cycles inevitable? Are the experts funneling information to the public more trustworthy than those who controlled press releases during 2020’s covid outbreak?

If thinking people learned only one thing from the covid pandemic, it was that official government narratives are politically slanted and often untrue. In this latest HPAI outbreak, perhaps the most egregious departure from truth is the notion that the birds have died as a result of the disease and that euthanasia for survivors is the best and only option.

First, of the nearly 60 million claimed deaths, perhaps no more than a couple million have actually died from HPAI. The rest have been killed in a draconian sterilization protocol. Using the word euthanized rather than the more proper word exterminated clouds the actual story. Euthanizing refers to putting an animal out of its misery. In other words, it’s going to die and is in pain or an incurable condition.

Very few of the birds killed are in pain or even symptomatically sick. If one chicken in a house of a million tests positive for HPAI, the government brings full law enforcement force to the farm to guarantee all live birds die. Quickly.

In not a single flock have all the birds died from HPAI. Every flock has survivors. To be sure, most are exterminated prior to survivors being identified. But in the cases of delayed extermination, a few birds appear immune to the disease. To be sure, HPAI is and can be deadly, but it never kills everything. 

The policy of mass extermination without regard to immunity, without even researching why some birds flourish while all around are dying, is insane. The most fundamental principles of animal husbandry and breeding demand that farmers select for healthy immune systems. We farmers have been doing that for millennia. We pick the most robust specimens as genetic material to propagate, whether it’s plants, animals, or microbes. 

But in its wisdom, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA—Usduh) has no interest in selecting, protecting, and then propagating the healthy survivors. The policy is clear and simple: kill everything that ever contacted the diseased birds. The second part of the policy is also simple: find a vaccine to stop HPAI.

If a farmer wanted to save the survivors and run a test on his own to try to breed birds with HPAI immunity, gun-toting government agents prohibit him from doing so. The scorched earth policy is the only option even though it doesn’t seem to be working. In fact, the cycles are coming faster and seem to be affecting more birds. Someone ought to question the efficacy.

Some do. When HPAI came through our area of Virginia about 15 years ago, federal veterinarians from around the nation descended to oversee the extermination. Two of them had heard about our pastured poultry operation and asked to come out for a visit on their own personal time. They were not together; they came a couple of weeks apart, independently. Both of them told me that they knew the reason for the outbreak: too many birds too densely packed in too many houses too geographically close together. But then both of them said that if they breathed that idea publicly, they would be fired the next day.

Talk about censorship. In its Feb. 24 edition, the Wall Street Journal headlined “America Is Losing Bird-Flu Battle.” Interestingly, while the article touts the official narrative about wild birds spreading the disease and farmers spreading it on their shoes, one farmer dares to say that “his largest facility houses about 4 million cage-free chickens, which are too many chickens in one locale. ‘We would never do that again,’ he said. New facilities will be smaller, housing about one million birds each, he said, and spaced farther apart to help thwart the threat of continued outbreak.” 

Yet a couple of paragraphs over, the article quotes Dr. John Clifford, former US chief veterinary officer, as saying “It’s everywhere.” If it’s everywhere, what difference does reducing flock sizes and putting more space between houses make? Clearly the farmer in this story has a hunch shared by my two visiting federal veterinarians many years ago: too many, too dense, too close.

To be sure, even backyard flocks are susceptible to HPAI, but many of these miniature flocks are on filthy dirt spots and suffer terrible hygienic conditions. Even so, keeping a million birds in a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) happy and hygienic is harder than a backyard flock, and the disease data supports this. The USDA and the industry desperately want to blame wild birds, backyard flocks, and dirty shoes rather than looking in the mirror and realizing this is nature’s way of screaming “Enough!”

“Enough abuse. Enough disrespect. Enough fecal particulate air creating abrasions in my tender mucous membranes.” When Joel Arthur Barker wrote Paradigms and brought that word into common usage, one of his axioms was that paradigms always eventually exceed their point of efficiency. The poultry industry assumed that if 100 birds in a house was good, 200 was better. With the advent of antibiotics and vaccines, houses increased in size and bird density. But nature bats last.

For the record, any agricultural system that views wildlife as a liability is an inherently anti-ecological model. The WSJ article notes that “workers have installed netting over lagoons and other spots where wild birds gather.” Lagoons are inherently anti-ecological. They are cesspools of disease and filth; nature never creates manure lagoons. In nature, animals spread manure out over the landscape where it can be a blessing, not a curse like a lagoon. Perhaps the real culprit is the industry making manure lagoons infecting wild ducks, not the other way around. It’s guilt by association, like saying since I see fire trucks at car wrecks, the fire trucks must be causing the car wrecks.

Notice the kind of bad guy slant on this WSJ sentence: “Buzzards, wild ducks or pests that sneak into barns also can spread the flu virus through mucus or saliva.” Doesn’t this read like a proverbial conspiracy, with wild things sneaking around? It’s all eerily similar to the covid virus sneaking around, needing to be contained with quarantines and masks. One feather contains enough HPAI to affect a million birds. You can’t lock down a chicken house from an errant feather or its microscopic molecules from wafting into a house. It’s absurd.

If our current ag policy is insane, what is a better alternative? My first suggestion is to save the survivors and begin breeding them. That’s a no-brainer. If a flock gets HPAI, let it run its course. It’ll kill the ones it’ll kill but in a few days the survivors will be obvious. Keep those and put them in a breeding program. The beautiful thing about chickens is that they mature and propagate fast enough so that in a year you can move forward two generations. That’s relatively fast. Let survival determine tomorrow’s genetic pool. 

Second, how about working on conditions that increase hygiene and happiness? Yes, I said happiness. All animals have optimal herd and flock sizes. For example, you never see more than a couple hundred wild turkeys together. Even when populations are high in an area, they break up into smaller groups rather than joining forces in flocks of 1,000. Other birds do join up in big flocks. Why the difference?

Nobody has made a definitive study of why, but we do know that optimal sizes do exist for stress-free living. For chickens, it’s about 1,000. An elderly poultry industry scientist visited our farm once and told me that if houses would break up chickens into 1,000-bird groups it would virtually eliminate diseases. He said it was okay to have 10,000 birds in a house as long as they were in 1,000-bird units. That way their social structure can function in a natural interaction. Animals have a hierarchy of bullies and timids. That social structure breaks down above optimal size.

With most herbivores, the size is huge, as noted by herd sizes on the Serengeti and Bison on the American plains. Honey bees divide when the hive reaches a certain size. Elk have optimal herd sizes. Mountain goats are in small flocks. Wild pigs too seek a group size seldom exceeding 100. The point is that the first line of defense is to figure out where the stress-free sweet spot is and respect it.

Finally, treat the chickens like chickens. In addition to proper flock size, give them fresh pasture in which to run and scratch. Not dirt yards. Not little aprons around a CAFO. With mobile shelter, on our farm we move the flocks every day or so to fresh pasture. That keeps them on new ground that’s been host free for an extended period of rest. They don’t sleep, eat, and live every moment of every day on their toilet. 

The American Pastured Poultry Producers Association (APPPA) is a trade organization promoting protocols for this kind of immune-boosting model. Thousands of practitioners adhere to mobile infrastructure that allows appropriate-sized flocks access to fresh air, sunlight, bugs, worms, and succulent green material. On our farm, we use the Millennium Feathernet and Eggmobile, welcoming wild ducks and red-winged blackbirds into the vicinity all as part of a symbiotic ecological nest.

While I don’t want to sound flippant or above HPAI susceptibility, incident rates definitely indicate less vulnerability in well-managed pastured flocks. Creating an immune-building protocol surely merits research as much as overriding the immune system with vaccines and trying to stay ahead of disease mutations and adaptations with human cleverness. How about humbly seeking nature for solutions rather than relying on hubris?

The parallels between HPAI expert orthodoxy and covid orthodoxy are too numerous to mention. Fear porn is rampant in our culture. The HPAI worry feeds food worry, which makes people clamor for government security. People will accept just about anything if they’re afraid. Does anyone really think human cleverness is going to beat migratory ducks? Really? Think it through and then embrace a more natural remedy: well-managed decentralized pastured poultry with appropriate flock sizes.