Eggs
Eggs are on everybody’s mind these days. Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) is the boogeyman at least for the shortage in the supermarket. And then you have all the backyard flocks that haven’t laid for six months, apparently primarily fed on the Tractor Supply Corp. (TSC) Producer’s Pride brand made by Purina. These are two completely separate stories.
First, the HPAI epizootic, which the news media says has killed 58 million birds in the last year, dropping the number of laying hens in the U.S. by 6 percent. Be assured that the cause and cure for this will be as unscientific as the cause and cure for covid. Remember hydroxychloroquine? Well, underground scuttlebutt has it that hypochlorous acid stops HPAI. A few drops in the water and all is well. It’s cheap and readily available, so chances are no reputable official will look at it. Just sayin’. Time for some underground experiments.
The main thing to realize is that the chicken numbers HPAI has allegedly killed are not actually HPAI mortalities. Most are non-symptomatic apparently healthy birds in the same area, only killed as a precaution. Think about that for a moment. I talked with a guy who had 250 surviving birds in a flock of 3,000. The USDA (duh) required the 250 healthy survivors to be exterminated. Now what in the name of common sense would make you want to kill the strong ones, the ones you could save as breeders to transfer immunity to subsequent generations?
Is that our new science? Kill the strong? Kill the survivors? These policies are exactly opposite anything you’d want if you really wanted genetic adaptation and natural immunity to develop. It’s craziness. I guess in a nation that demands equality, this is the ultimate—kill the survivors so they will be equally dead with the weak.
At least the experts admit they don’t know why it happens or how it transmits. Oh, they’ve got ideas, but not really. It is weak. Temperatures as low as 85-100 degrees F kill it. What’s amazing is that the USduh gives a clean bill of health to farms within 6 weeks of extermination. If this virus is as ubiquitous as they say, how on earth do you know it’s gone from a farm in 50 days? That’s insane. And who’s going to keep all the wild ducks from flying over? That’ll be the next agenda, I suppose.
Now to the non-laying backyard flocks eating TSC Purina feed. In 2020, 1 million new backyard flocks started in the U.S. That brought a lot of new customers to TSC for bagged chicken feed. TSC feed uses Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) corn. For years, even conventional dairy farmers have stayed away from GMO corn because it allegedly causes spontaneous abortions in their lactating cows. Doesn’t seem to affect non-breeding stock. Interesting.
Egg smuggling from Mexico into the U.S. is now a big deal. Mexico doesn’t allow GMOs. In fact, a big brouhaha is brewing over an outright ban on all imported GMOs there and American farmers are apoplectic. I’m just surmising here, musing if you will: if GMOs affect embryos in dairy cows, is it a stretch to think they affect eggs in chickens? And the fact that Mexico is not having any of this problem, do you reckon that could have anything to do with not feeding GMOs? And the fact that all these American backyard flocks, when they go to local feed sources, see their flocks immediately begin to lay again—what’s that all about?
A lot is going on folks, in the air, in the bowels of the swamp, in the unseen microbial community fighting for space at a microscopic level. Be smart out there. Keep watching. We live in interesting times. Eggs are one of nature’s most complete and enjoyable nutrient dense human foods. Listen, world, don’t mess with my eggs.
How secure is your egg supply?