There’s an Avian Flu-caused Egg Shortage – are Backyard Chickens the Answer for You?

As we humans grapple with a “tripledemic” of COVID-19, influenza, and RSV (not to mention the lurking spectres of Mpox and staph/scarlet fever infections), it can be easy to lose sight of how our industrial civilization’s systems of production and consumption are interlinked with the subjugation and intensive exploitation of other life. Of course, besides zoonotic disease crises — and other forms of human suffering, such as the endangerment and exploitation of livestock industry workers who are primarily immigrants, refugees, and people of color in the U.S. — the worldwide intensive raising, warehousing, and slaughter of domestic livestock produces mass animal suffering and death even outside of slaughter for consumption, including the rapid spread of highly infectious pathogens that devastate domestic animals as well as wildlife populations.