POULTRY EMERGENCY WRIT LARGE

The bird flu that's hammering the California poultry industry and causing Poultry Emergencies in neighboring states has now spread to Texas. And in Europe, an outbreak in the Netherlands has spilled into Belgium, which just announced two more cases, and is nearing Germany. A quarter of a million birds in Belgium are being slaughtered, while the Dutch have already killed eleven million - 10% of the country's entire flock - yet new cases of the disease are still being found. News stories are careful to note that the flu isn't dangerous to humans - at least they were until this weekend, when a veterinarian "died of pneumonia after catching the bird flu, raising fears that a mutated version of the avian virus could cause a SARS-type human epidemic." Great. All this so some people can enjoy their KFC and McNuggets.

UPDATE 5/13: It's now spread to Germany.