A bird in the burner, worth two in the landfill!

The NIMBY factor has risen in the heartland and the Province of British Columbia is at a loss as to how to handle it. The Not in My Backyard rebuff comes with the decision of the Provincial Government to bury the carcasses of culled, infected chickens in landfills out in the provincial outback, or the heartland as the government likes to call those areas after the last freeway exit in Chilliwack.

At issue is the need to deal with the breakout of avian flu, which has reached a crisis point with 30 chicken farms sealed off by the Food Inspection Agency from the Pacific Ocean to Chilliwack. Some 19 million chickens are to be killed over the next couple of weeks, all to rid the area of avian flu. 15 million of those birds designated as broilers will be “salvaged” which means they will eventually make their way to market, apparently considered healthy and not infected with the avian flu, they’ll live to die another day in the not too distant future. But that still leaves roughly 4 million birds to meet their end fast in either an incinerator or a land fill, and those 4 million birds seem to be causing some major distress in the heartland.

The preferred method of disposal is apparently burning, but the prospect of that many chickens going to the hothouse must have seemed rather daunting to the officials, as plan B quickly became the preferred idea. Double bagging the gassed chickens and trucking them to such places as the Cache Creek landfill, and other similar landfills around the province.

The folks in the heartland a little alarmed at the prospect of decomposing chickens resting in their neck of the woods have risen as one; a blockade went up in Cache Creek a few days ago, to turn back any truck carrying chickens for disposal. Signs stating that “no chicken will cross this road” sprung up like weeds on a hot Spring afternoon. The government misread the heartland on this one, the general feeling is if the chicken farms are in the Lower Mainland, then so should their dead byproduct. A Provincial emergency or not, the convoy of trucks heading east, with their diseased loads is not welcome at their dumps. Agriculture Minister John Van Dongen plans a meeting on Friday with the mayors of the landfill sites identified as home for the deceased birds, and while he has been backpedaling a bit about the landfill option, he says if they don’t address the issue fast it will only get worse. The prospect of RCMP escorts of truck conveys to the dump is not going to be a great visual image for a beleaguered government.

But the disposal of the dead is just a small part of the troublesome issue, what has yet to be explained is how such a widespread breakout took place in the first place. The Tyee has done an extensive piece on the issue of corporate farming in the lower mainland, one which raises many questions about the industry. It questions the current thinking that the avian flu was introduced by wild fowl in the area, apparently infecting the corporate chickens at will. As the Tyee points out, if the wild fowl are the culprits how come there is not a massive cull of those birds?

Another thing that has struck me as strange is, if the Fraser Valley is in such a critical state at the moment, how come the avian flu has not spread across the border to Whatcom county and Washington state chicken farms. It seems hard to believe that the wild fowl are so disciplined as to not stray over the US border, Homeland security act or not. Perhaps there is something in the corporate farming environment that has led to this outbreak, until we get a better understanding of just what has happened and why, then the NIMBY factor will rule the day.

Fear is a very great motivating factor, and judging at how little information has been provided by the government on this issue, fear rules. I can fully understand the concern of the folks in Cache Creek and other selected destinations. It’s easy to say there’s no health risk at hand, much harder to actually provide proof. And who wants to be the one to say I told you so at the end of the day, when it may be too late. It’s obvious that these birds have to be disposed of as quickly as possible, but to just dump them in the laps of the folks of the heartland seems like a rather arrogant position. To not fully explain the situation to them and the rest of the province, once again shows how out of touch with the people that this government seems to be getting day by day.