It said the current bird flu crisis is an urgent reminder to transition food production away from intensive animal agriculture.
It is urging state politicians to copy Vermont and offer subsidies so dairy farmers, egg farmers, and others who wish to plant orchards or otherwise transition to growing crops.
During the current outbreak, highly-pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus has infected dairy cows in 101 herds nationwide, including 25 herds in Michigan.
The virus has resulted in the deaths of millions of birds, most of them through culling, with a focus on laying hens on egg farms. So far, the H5N1 bird flu has infected three farm workers.
”Facilities with large numbers of animals in a small amount of space are a threat to public health because they provide ideal conditions for viruses to spread, evolve, and possibly acquire the ability to infect peopled,” the doctors’ news release said.
“It must be mentioned that animals raised in stressful, crowded environments are more prone to disease,” Lauren Maziarz, an associate professor of public health at Bowling Green State University, told the Toledo Blade newspaper which reported on the doctors’ statement.
It highlighted the size of two farms: 10, 000 dairy cows on a farm in Sioux County, Iowa, and 4.2 million hens on an egg farm in Iowa.
