Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The bird flu is killing turkeys by the millions and now Iowa chickens. If it kills them all, my doctor won’t be able to insist I lose weight by eating low-fat boneless, skinless, tasteless, dry white meat. Silver lining.
Joe Doakes
Heaven help us all if the Swine Flu makes a comeback.
I have just one word for you Joe. Just one. Are you listening?
Brine
Think about it. Will you think about it?
Nuff said. It’s a deal.
Hoof and mouth disease could be brutal. We could all end up eating lutefisk three meals per day.
Seriously, poultry does not have to be dry and tasteless. If you cook it as if it were well marbled beef, yes, it will be, but there’s your hint.
And to be perfectly blunt, I’m a little bit uneasy about this whole deal. We have interested parties like the MDH arguing that “since it hasn’t happened, no risk”, but at the same time admitting that there may be a risk for those who have handled poultry.
And how do we cook poultry without handling it? Let’s think about this a minute here. I have to wonder if huge operations really are the best way to produce meat–looks like nothing more than a giant daycare for animals there, and we know how daycare spreads disease.
“Bird”-flu has been on the radar for more than 10 years now,since the first strain started to show up. That’s not unusual, new strains pop up all the time because that’s what viruses do, and they mostly start in animals. Human infection comes from exposure to the infected animal, but usually the virus can’t be passed human-to-human. The concern is when one of those animal viruses mutates to a form that can be passed between humans, then “Katy bar the door.” My company looked at the potential impact of, say, a 1918 Spanish flu-type outbreak today, and it’s not pretty. And our vaunted healthcare system and technology would be of little help. Just as an example, IIRC, there aren’t enough ventilators in hospitals to even begin to meet the expected demand. Vaccines take months to develop, even with newer methods, and then more time to manufacture.
Bundle all that with mad cow and CWD and what meat do we have left?
I could stand the lutefisk, but would rather go with the pickeled herring …
Hmm…
Maybe Soylent Green isn’t such a bad idea after all.