May be of interest in this debate https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-12/biosecurity-time-bomb-backyard-chooks-csiro/10609782 RELATED STORY: Snapshot of biosecurity outbreaks in Australia RELATED STORY: How to ensure keeping chickens is all it's cracked up to be RELATED STORY: How the pet goat is setting up home in suburbia Infectious disease experts have warned of a potential biohazard, literally in our backyards. CSIRO research director for Health and Biosecurity Paul De Barro said there was a growing risk your humble chicken, pig or goat could contract a zoonotic disease, which can be deadly to humans.
About 8 years ago all our pigs (as well as the ones in the village) died out over the course of a few days, no explanation and everyone took it as it just happens sometimes. I don't believe chickens were affected though. It was my out to convince the wife that a piggery was not in our future. Too much work to basically break even in my opinion. Now her family uses the pens for a pig or two that they raise and the rest she rents to folks in the village. I'm curious though if anyone finds out what disease(s) would cause that and if there are any immunizations against it. Shawn
She knows that shipped has sailed; no interest in doing a piggery again. We do grow out a few pigs a year for different celebrations so it could come in handy.
This site http://www.thepigsite.com/diseaseinfo/ lists over 140 diseases which affect pigs and many are caused by bacteria or viruses. My guess for a 100% lethal disease which spreads rapidly is a virus (African Swine Virus is one such virus) but any organism which kills 100% of its hosts is actually being very unsuccessful. In my opinion, anything that lethal should be investigated by a country's animal disease control organisation and rapid action taken - which could include the culling and burning of all the same species within a very wide area (possibly several kilometres). The worry for humans, apart from food loss in countries very dependent on a particular animal species for food, is if the disease jumps species into humans.
That would depend on how easily it is transmitted and long it lays dormant before symptoms show. Here is a fun little game with the goal of wiping out the entire human population with a disease that you get to level up. lol http://pandemic3.com/
you get used to it after a few years... My trick is that everytime one of those fukkers wakes me up at 5am, I'm just imaging it getting stab the sh*t out of it by his inbreed brother... then I go to sleep again
