FOR years we have forced countless chickens to live short, miserable lives in huge, crammed henhouses in the name of intensive agriculture. In 2004, they started to wreak their revenge.
Somewhere in east Asia these birds have been breeding a flu virus that, according to the World Health Organization, could eventually kill millions of people. Called H5N1, it has been causing regular, if unreported, outbreaks in poultry in China for years, as intensive poultry production has skyrocketed. This year the virus spread beyond China’s borders, as far afield as Indonesia, forcing China at last to admit to its existence. It…
