Eager to hear the case from anyone -- @mikegrunwald.bsky.social or @tamarhaspel.bsky.social or @jennysplitter.bsky.social or @danbr.bsky.social come to mind -- about whether a system that leads to 40 million + chicken deaths in a matter of months is truly "efficient" - ThreadSky

jasondovemark.bsky.social • 4 days ago

Eager to hear the case from anyone -- @mikegrunwald.bsky.social or @tamarhaspel.bsky.social or @jennysplitter.bsky.social or @danbr.bsky.social come to mind -- about whether a system that leads to 40 million + chicken deaths in a matter of months is truly "efficient"

Reposted from Jason Mark

"Concentration may lead to efficiencies, but it also comes with brittleness. As a nation, we have too many eggs in one industrialized basket."
civileats.com/2025/02/18/o...

Comments

cmf406.bsky.social•4 days ago

I'm in SW Montana, have a few backyard hens, and there are a LOT of small flocks here in town. Part of it, I think, might be that we're an AG area, with vibrant 4H.
But during the pandemic, ranchers & smallholders did a lot of work shoring up our local food systems. Across political divides.

jennysplitter.bsky.social•4 days ago

My concern about backyard chickens is just how often bird flu outbreaks are happening there too, and it seems mostly because it's been so widespread in wild birds.

My tolerance for disease vectors is pretty limited, though I do have two children. 🤔

jennysplitter.bsky.social•4 days ago

Re: the claim that an alternative ag system like regenerative, is better for disease spread, my understanding is that's not true broadly but it's been a minute since I wrote about this study by @matthewhayek.bsky.social. (not sure how relevant for backyard chickens!)

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add6681

tungholio.bsky.social•4 days ago

How often are outbreaks happening in backyards? Do we even have a way to monitor or detect? I ask as a backyard chicken owner. They don't *look* sick. (https://youtube.com/live/KigVDz4Gb-Y)

jennysplitter.bsky.social•4 days ago

Yes, so here's one map. There is another one I was looking at that I can't seem to find, but this has commercial plus backyard: https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/data-map-commercial.html

jennysplitter.bsky.social•4 days ago

Ah, I think it was this, but it's based on the same CDC data. https://investigatemidwest.org/2025/01/21/134m-poultry-and-counting-interactive-charts-show-hardest-hit-counties-in-bird-flu-crisis/

jennysplitter.bsky.social•4 days ago

Another challenge is asymptomatic spread. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/cdc-finds-evidence-that-bird-flu-spread-silently-to-veterinarians-suggesting-undercount-of-cases

jennysplitter.bsky.social•4 days ago

But look, there are different vantage points. If you already have chickens, take the precautions recommended by CDC. My points about vulnerability are aimed at the idea that more backyard flocks would make the US food system more resilient to bird flu. I don't think that's clear from the data.

afinaret.bsky.social•4 days ago

This is my concern too. Also the reduced regulation for backyard chickens (e.g., what if a vaccine becomes available and it can't be implemented at scale), and the potential for worsened localized/scattered externalities (like for neighbors, kids, etc.).

soilsteward.bsky.social•4 days ago

For the food system as a whole, it seems pretty obvious that more numerous, smaller operations would increase resilience. At the same time, reduced population densities, and healthier birds living in microbial rich & diverse environments would also increase resiliency.

pettyranch.bsky.social•4 days ago

Different systems, different risks. Large flocks have more bird-bird interactions, higher risk of spread among birds. Small flocks have more bird-human interactions, higher risk of transfer to humans, + more interactions with wild birds.

nonviolence.bsky.social•4 days ago

We need to reduce the root issues of pandemics asap.

World treating symptoms, not cause of pandemics, says UN:
1. Too much meat, too much egg and too much dairy consumption
2. Too much systemic incest and inbreeding
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/06/coronavirus-world-treating-symptoms-not-cause-pandemics-un-report

blooming-burbs.bsky.social•4 days ago

I keep citing this article by @jandutkiewicz.bsky.social on this subject but its relevant to your question. https://newrepublic.com/article/191040/cost-eggs-democrats-trump-h5n1

jasondovemark.bsky.social•4 days ago

this is a good one! Thanks for sharing

blooming-burbs.bsky.social•4 days ago

Btw, I don’t have chickens but have a couple of neighbors who do and I regularly buy eggs from/trade with them

mikegrunwald.bsky.social•4 days ago

Seems suboptimal! I don’t know much about the flu but I’m pretty sure we’re not going to get rid of jt by raising 70B chickens in people’s backyards. So I would want to think about policies/incentives that could make the system better.

jasondovemark.bsky.social•4 days ago

No one said anything about "getting rid of it." If anything, many poultry experts say we're on the cusp of it going endemic. And if that's the case, and H5N1 is here to stay, then more and smaller production nodes may be more resilient than a few giant producers like we have now ...

mikegrunwald.bsky.social•4 days ago

I mean, how small? I see people talking about backyards but the US has 80M single family homes - if they all had backyards, every one of them would need to support >100 chickens to supply the US chicken diet. And that doesn’t even include eggs!

garthcbrown.bsky.social•4 days ago

I think there really is a happy middle ground on a lot of this stuff, with operations that are big enough to achieve decent economies of scale but small enough to blunt the problems with extreme concentration. But the middle ground is never going to be as cheap as maximally concentrated farming.

mikegrunwald.bsky.social•4 days ago

I think the last thing you said is right, and I’m genuinely unsure whether there’s really a happy middle ground on size and concentration. Would somewhat smaller farms really be somewhat better, or should we just focus on making the gigantic farms somewhat better?

garthcbrown.bsky.social•4 days ago

Though it varies with species, I think medium sized operations can use practices that are unavailable to the biggest farms, but there is nothing inherently more humane about them. Giant farms with high welfare standards would be better than unregulated smaller operations.

tamarhaspel.bsky.social•4 days ago

When COVID hit there was a lot of talk about how small farms are more resilient, but also lots of small farmers talking about how they were going out of business. I never saw actual data on it. Bird flu's different, but still. Would mid-size farms be less vulnerable?

jasondovemark.bsky.social•4 days ago

No one is taking an a maximalist position here. The point isn't that *every* household needs to be a poultry farm. It's that if *many more* households than today produced some of their own eggs, that would build more resiliency into the food system.

mikegrunwald.bsky.social•4 days ago

The point of my gigantic #’s is that we eat so damn much chicken and so damn many eggs that it seems to me household production would have to be absurdly gigantic as well to move the resiliency needle.

chrisnelder.bsky.social•4 days ago

Just doin' what you told us to, Mike! https://michaelgrunwald.substack.com/p/eat-mor-chikn

boyceupholt.bsky.social•4 days ago

I talked to epidemiologists about this a few years back. The gist is that there’s a balance — backyard flocks (and pastures generally) may have more exposure to spillover from wild birds. But increased intensification would require levels of biosecurity that are untenable

jennysplitter.bsky.social•4 days ago

This is the core problem. Small farms aren’t more resistant to bird flu.

insideanimalag.bsky.social•4 days ago

The industrial animal ag system has already led to loss of clean water, loss of biodiversity, loss of decent air quality - not to mention the inherent animal cruelty. Efficient, yes. At a huge cost.

maggiefox.bsky.social•4 days ago

How about just not eating eggs?

tamarhaspel.bsky.social•4 days ago

Great q! It's hard to know how this would pan out in a different system. I'd love to see lower densities, but no matter the system, you're going to have chickens housed together, and at risk of infection. Would more, smaller houses (including backyard ones) end up with fewer kills? I don't know.

tamarhaspel.bsky.social•4 days ago

I've kept chickens for 15 years, but we didn't re-flock this time, in part because of the risk of bird flu.

hoiyinip.bsky.social•4 days ago

Love the variety of data & details in this personal story! Years ago, I was bummed to see local cities banning backyard chickens. Then, with lawmakers increasingly acknowledging the housing shortage, ADU became the new backyard topic. And some discovered how to build an ADU with a better ocean view.

lukewanderer.bsky.social•4 days ago

Thank you for this post! It led me to @jennysplitter.bsky.social and @danbr.bsky.social (I already followed Mike & Tamar, ever since their #Climavores podcast).

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