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Europeans neurotic about bird flu Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/21/060321065911.2zh124u7.htmlhttp://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/21/060321065911.2zh124u7.html
Why is Europe so neurotic about bird flu?
Mar 21 1:59 AM US/Eastern
Bird flu has come to Europe and, if the newspapers are any guide, many Europeans are running around like, well, headless chickens.
In some countries, sales of poultry have hit the floor. Panicky pet-owners have dumped their dog or cat, fearing that felines and canines can somehow pass on an avian virus.
And police are fed up with fielding calls from terrified people who have spotted a dead pigeon or a stork building its nest -- and, in one case in eastern France, an owl that made a menacing H5N1-sounding hoot.
The daftness gives the lie to a continent that prides itself on having the world's richest history in science, the most educated population and a communications system that is second to none.
But there is no surprise among historians and food experts, who say this irrationality has deep roots.
From the 14th-century plague known as the Black Death to cholera, typhoid and killer influenza, Europe has experienced waves of deadly pandemics that, like bird flu, came from abroad, they say.
And, over the past 20 years, confidence in food safety and government reassurance has been badly undermined by a series of scares.
"We mistrust the authorities and their utterances," says French historian Madeleine Ferrieres.
Antoine Flahault, who runs a French doctors' watchdog group called Sentinels for Disease Surveillance, agrees.
"There is a certain logic which says you're better off not eating chicken, when you think about all the past lies and present confusion," he said.
"When you are being told that there is zero risk, you remain on your guard, he said.
The source for much of Europe's edginess was the April 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The stricken Soviet nuclear reactor spewed radioactive dust over swathes of Europe and spurred the rise of the green movement, which feeds on worries about food and environmental safety.
In France, Chernobyl is recalled for the government's blithe assurance that no contamination had fallen on French soil. As wags suggested, this meant the cloud had obediently stopped at the national border.
Then along came bovine spongeiform encephalopathy (BSE), which dealt a blow to Britain's beef industry that endures to this day.
Britons today recall the moment in 1990, at the height of the scare, when the then agriculture minister, John Gummer, thrust a fairground beefburger into his child's mouth to prove that the meat was safe.
Other episodes have been dioxin-tainted chicken and worries about US hormone-treated beef and genetically-modified crops. But on other continents, these opinion-shaping events either have not happened, nor have they been elevated to public consciousness by a powerful green movement.
A contributing factor has been big changes in European eating habits, thanks to better hygiene and just-in-time supermarket delivery.
In Europe "we have no longer know how to deal with suspicious foods," noted Ferrieres.
In the past, she said, meat in Europe was boiled or stewed for a long time, both to tenderise it and kill bugs, but this folk wisdom has disappeared in favour of lightly cooked flesh demanded by modern recipes.
Fanning the worries has the emergence of terrifying new diseases that the authorities in Europe, as elsewhere, have so often fumbled. They include AIDS, in which for a while HIV-contaminated blood was allowed to enter blood banks, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
Rene Favier, a historian who writes on human responses to catastrophes, said the present alarm has an ironic tinge: People mistrust their government yet at the same time turn to it for help.
"The risk is that governments are fearful of looking inactive so they launch big public-awareness campaigns to inform and reassure. This turns out to be counter-productive because it ends up up boosting people's worries," said Favier.
Copyright AFP 2005
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