COBRA - the British governments national emergency committee will be meeting today after a dead swan was found floating in a harbour in Fife, Scotland. The police have admitted that the bird was found a week ago, but the information was suppressed until now. Presumably this was done in the interests of chicken factory and supermarkets owners who hope to be made Lords.
Locals say the dead swan had been floating in the harbour area for days "washing in and out with the tide" and had been seen being pecked by sea gulls. There is a large bird santuary 5 miles off shore. After tests confirmed that HSN1 killed the swan the authorities admitted that 14 other dead birds are being tested.
The BBC radio program 'Farmer's Today' reports that police have sealed off a 10 kilometer zone around the beach. They reported that the "only good news" was that there are no major poultry farms in the area. This has turned out to be untrue - they are nine chicken farms in the area.
The national emergency plan involves stopping all movement of poultry but the massive chicken factory farm industry has been lobbying against this. They want the same policy as with the foot and mouth crisis - which allowed the disease to travel all over the country.
The farmer's 'Buy Chicken Today' slogan is likely to be ignored in Britain where the mental disease 'Food Fear' is already epidemic. Apparently you can only get bird flu (H5N1), if you are in "close proximity" to dead birds: super market 'chicken areas' are likely to be deserted.
'Free Range' and 'Organic' chickens and eggs look set to re marketed as 'Free Range Insiders' (or something like that).
The blitz spirit remains strong in London however, despite the foreign threat to the famous British Breakfast. There are no plans to cull the capitals massive population of pigeons - described as 'flying rats' by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone a well known pigeon hater.
DEFRA the government department dealing with the bird flu crisis has told schmoo that "pigeons can't catch bird flu". Of course this must be true.
Every other type of bird has caught the killer virus so why not pigeons? Even cats have caught it in Germany so it has learned to spread to other animals.
So why not pigeons? The only hope is that the 'flying rats' have got so many other diseases there is no room aboard for another - some hope.
The government line is 'Don't Panic' - more soon (after we have done some panic buying)
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