A Fowl Plague

Since the latest avian flu outbreak began in late 2003, the virus has struck at least 250 people, killed more than 100 worldwide, terrified millions, and prompted governments to take rapid and decisive action.Agriculture and health officials—men and women in suits and white lab coats, not farmers—embarked upon drastic but seemingly necessary steps to stop the flu’s spread, including culling tens of thousands of chickens and other birds in areas where outbreaks occurred, vaccinating chickens and other poultry (with often expensive medications), and recommending that people have less physical contact with their chickens.

The media, national governments, and development agencies have often blamed the spread of the disease on small rural and urban poultry farmers. Rural farmers especially depend on livestock to meet their daily needs for transportation, food, and fuel. And the cities of the developing world house an estimated 800 million farmers, many of them women, raising crops and animals for food, transportation, and income. It is those backyard and rooftop producers, some claim,with their unsanitary production and processing methods, that have encouraged the spread of avian flu—for example, by allowing chickens and other animals to roam freely in back yards and houses, and selling and killing live animals at wet markets, practices that are centuries old. A senior official of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in 2005 regarding avian flu, “The backyard chicken is the big problem and the fight against bird flu must be waged in the back yard of the world’s poor.”

As a result, at least 15 nations have restricted or even banned freerange and backyard production of birds, endangering the livelihoods of countless small farmers and jeopardizing the availability of affordable food for consumers. In June 2006, for instance, the...