Meet the Factory Farmer

When I first heard the bird flu outbreak was on a turkey farm owned by some guy named Bernard Matthews, I though he was just another farmer, struggling to pay his tractor mortgage, listening to Farming Today over the crowing of the odd rooster.

But comparing Bernard Matthews to a poor country farmer is like comparing Sam Walton to a Girl Scout cookie purveyor.

Bernard Matthews is to European turkey what Tyson and Perdue are to U.S. chicken. His name would be familiar to anyone who's walked down the meat aisle at Tesco (which explains why I'd never heard of him).

He's the biggest producer of turkey in Europe, and the inventor of the infamous Turkey Twizzler, derided by Jamie Oliver during his quest to improve school lunches.

At a net worth of £300 million, Bernard Matthews is one step above the queen in the list of richest Britons.

But not all is well in the factory farms of Bernard Matthews. In September two workers from his farm were videotaped playing baseball in one of his turkey sheds, using a live turkey instead of a baseball. They were convicted of cruelty to animals and sentenced to 200 hours community service.

The bad publicity didn't stop Bernard Matthews from being awarded the Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in December.

And guess who's picking up the tab for the culling of almost 160,000 birds at the Bernard Matthews farm, including compensation for the value of each bird? That's right, the public, aka The Taxpayer, despite the fact it's beginning to look like the outbreak of H5N1 bird flu at the turkey shed in Suffolk wasn't caused by the odd migratory bird wandering in from the cold. It's more likely biosecurity procedures weren't followed at the farm.

Someone with a degree in Economics better explain to me how this will ensure that factory farms follow the rules in the future.

I'm reminded of something I read recently:

The executive editor of Poultry magazine put the trade-off this way in a 2005 editorial: “The prospect of a virulent flu to which we have absolutely no resistance is frightening. However, to me, the threat is much greater to the poultry industry. I’m not as worried about the U.S. human population dying from bird flu as I am that there will be no chicken to eat.”

Unfortunately, the public appetite for cheap chicken hasn't seemed to have been diminished by the recent outbreak of H5N1. This is good news for factory farmers like Bernard Matthews, but bad news for the rest of us. Factory farms, while they turn a nice profit for Farmer Matthews, are profiting the avian influenza virus even more, providing millions—billions—of turns at the roulette wheel of virus mutation.

But when someone wins at roulette, someone else pays. Humanity will surely lose this game of craps. Thanks a lot, Mr. Factory Farmer.

Comments

[Diane]

It is always a source of amazement to me that people have no apparent interest in how their food gets to their table--the unspeakable cruelty, the hormones, the pesticides. If you really are what you eat, then most people in industrialized nations are evil and toxic.

[KathyF]

What gets me is, I have heard a couple of times in the past week that "every vegan I know cares more about animals than people" while that industry spokesperson was saying that exact thing! He cares more about animals and their associated profits, however, than people.