Imports of poultry and eggs stopped in view of bird flu

Singapore has suspended imports of birds and poultry from Selangor, Malaysia. I think we have been desensitized by bird flu outbreaks around the world, until we don't feel much about the disease outbreak anymore, unless it happens to strike someone in our area.

Time and again, we will hear about a bird flu outbreak somewhere and then countries which are importing the chickens from that area will suspend this import until the wave is over. But how would we know if the wave is over? It is very hard to tell. Sooner or later after the suspension is removed, we will heard that someone from some place contracted bird flu again and this suspension process repeats itself.

We are told that we cannot contract bird flu by eating poultry and eggs. Maybe. But can we be 100% sure? Unlikely. We have seen many scientific "proves" being shot down as new experiments conducted reveal new "proves". If scientists in the future were to say that bird flu can be spread by eating poultry and eggs, I wouldn't be surprised. In fact, the avian flu virus was found in some frozen duck shipped to Japan from China in 2003. Experts tell us it's highly unusual and heat will destroy it. Still, it's scary to think about the likelihood of the virus mutating to a heat-resistant one.

The best way to me would be to avoid eating poultry (or any other meat) and be a vegetarian at least. In the past decades, we don't hear of mad cow disease, H5N1, etc. Now we used a lot of antibiotics on the animals to sustain our own greed, and in the end, our carefully thought of plan backfires.