So claims a poultry extension agent at Purdue, who cites the dangers of cockfighting,"multiple species", and Asians who "sleep closely" with their fowl as reasons why the American vertically integrated, closed-off industrial system is safer.

B.S., says Mike Davis, who recently on Democracy Now argued that the threat of Avian Flu is greatly increased by both the power of industrial poultry agribusiness and the new ecology of industrial poultry farming. What we have seen, he says, is the

"generalization around the world of the American model of poultry production, the Tyson model. Tyson is the giant poultry producer, one of the most exploitative corporations in the United States with just an appalling record of working conditions. Tyson kills several billion chickens a year. It's created huge conurbations of chickens, unprecedented concentrations of chickens.

Now this model has spread to East Asia. China has become the biggest consumer of poultry in the world, and the leading company involved in China is a Thai-based firm called C.P., which has used the Tyson model, a vertical integration of concentrating poultry in enormous warehouses. And it was directly involved in the Thai government's cover-up of the initial outbreak of avian flu in Thailand last year. The industrialization of poultry, above all, has sped up the evolution of influenza. It's changed the nature of disease by changing its ecology."