The bad news about bird flu entering the UK has sparked off a debate about whether intensive farming is to blame, at least in part, for this latest food scare. Now I’m certainly no defender of Bernard Matthews or the terrible cruelty involved in factory farming, but I think that pointing the finger in this case is misleading and potentially even damaging.

Avian flu has until now been mainly a problem in South East Asia, where virtually all of the human deaths have occurred. Western style factory farming was in no way connected with this, as the poultry involved were generally leading fairly free lives and became infected through contact with wild birds. In the Suffolk case, it appears that the infection was again through indirect contact with wild birds, and that the only impact that factory farming had on the outbreak was the speed at which it spread within the flock.

The danger with trying to link these two issues is that it could damage the perfectly legitimate campaign against factory farming on the grounds of animal welfare and human health, by reducing the credibility of protests.

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