Chickenware

The inevitable has happened: bird flu, also known as HN51 virus, has struck in Italy as well, killing so far a small number of wild swans, but bringing the threat of a devastating epidemic much closer to us than Thailand or China.

Now, I will not start elucubrating on the fact that thousands and thousands of people every year die of ordinary flu, and no-one seems to give a damn about them. Instead, these days every dead bird makes the headlines: good morning, here's the top news from TG1: 15 dead people in car accidents because of fog, dead swan found in Sicily, genocide in Darfur...

No, that's not what I wanted to talk about. We know the sales of newspapers are declining 5% a year, and they are doing whatever in order to stop the trend. And what better than a few dead birds to bring up TV audience at election times?

What really makes me think I'm living among 58 million idiots is that the sales of chicken and turkey meat has declined 70% after the discovery of the dead swans, causing the loss of thirty-thousand jobs!

Now, you don't have to be a genius to guess that Italy is the only country in Europe where this has happened. And this is true in spite of the fact that we have perhaps the best food higiene control system in the world (heck, we even run the EU food safety agency!). Besides, other EU countries are importing more of our chicken than ever before, a clear sign that they trust our standards.

Now, here's a message to those demented monkeys that stop buying bird meat because of chicken flu. Since they're probably too illiterate to read this, I'll speak with pictures.

Here's how the chicken whose meat you have eaten so far is grown:



As you can see the environment is comfortable and higienically optimal for food.

Here's how the animals look after slaughtering:



The way they are kept obviously guarantees the maximum cleanliness.

Now here's a picture of the chicken you are refusing to buy:



(thanks to Il pollaio del Re for the pics)

And here's a picture of a more intelligent animal than you:



I can assure you that the chicken breast we ate last Friday was delicious, and cost only 3 euros for half a kilo.