Nagpur Animal Husbandry Department and Poultry Industry Try to Silence Public Health Warning on Bird Flu

After its informative billboard urging people to choose vegan meals to help stop the spread of bird flu, which spreads like wildfire through crowded factory farm sheds, was ordered to be removed by the Office of the Deputy Commissioner of Animal Husbandry, Nagpur, PETA India has sent a letter of complaint to Deputy Commissioner Dr Nitin Phuke urging him to reconsider the decision both in the interest of chicken welfare and to protect public health and safety. Meanwhile, as another attempt to silence PETA India’s truth-telling message, Vets in Poultry Association has filed a complaint with The Advertising Standards Council of India that falsely alleges that bird flu only infects birds, whereas in truth it has already infected numerous mammalian species and resulted in numerous human deaths worldwide. PETA India has meanwhile replaced the bird flu billboard with an ad featuring actor Radhika Madan posing in a garment made of cabbage leaves, urging passersby to “Turn Over a New Leaf” and “Try Vegan.”

The billboard read, “बर्ड फ्लू, हा संकटाचा संकेत आहे. वीगन बना!”, which means “Bird Flu, this is a sign of trouble. Go Vegan!” in English. It aimed to inform the public that factory farms and live-animal markets, where sick chickens are often confined in unsanitary conditions, creates an ideal environment for the transmission and mutation of viral diseases, while emphasizing individual responsibility to help prevent future pandemics, by choosing to eat vegan. 

This billboard is located at 535H+WR2, next to Moti Mahal, Sadar, Nagpur, Maharashtra, 440001

Virologists warn that as bird flu is increasingly infecting mammals, the virus is at risk of becoming more easily transmissible to and between humans. Health experts have warned that H5N1 bird flu – which has a mortality rate of approximately 60% in humans – has a potential for a pandemic 100 times worse than COVID-19. According to the World Health Organization, exposure to diseased or dead birds or contaminated environments, such as live bird markets, carcasses or raw meat, contaminated eggshells and raw dairy, can risk bird flu infection.  

In addition to helping fight infectious diseases, people who eat vegan reduce their risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Vegan meals also spare animals immense suffering. In today’s meat, egg, and dairy industries, huge numbers of animals are raised in vast warehouses in severe confinement. Chickens’ throats are cut while they’re still conscious, and for eggs, male chicks are commonly burned, drowned, crushed, fed live to fish, or killed in other cruel ways along with other unwanted chicks because they cannot lay eggs. Similarly, cows are forcibly separated from their beloved calves for dairy, pigs are stabbed in the heart, and fish are cut open while they’re still alive for food. 

PETA India emphasizes that chickens, like humans, are sentient beings with unique personalities who form intricate social bonds, experience dreams while sleeping, and even anticipate the future. Just like us, they do not want to die, yet an estimated 1 million living feeling chickens are killed to be eaten every four hours in India.