Joel Salatin: The Truth About Mass Killing of Poultry, Avian Flu, and Restoring Sanity to Farming

When one bird gets sick, they kill them all—but is mass extermination really the answer to avian flu?

In the ever-expanding theater of industrial agriculture, a new villain is constantly paraded before the public: the "deadly" avian flu. But what if this so-called crisis is not just a function of nature, but rather an engineered problem exacerbated—if not outright created—by the very system claiming to solve it?

Joel Salatin, the legendary regenerative farmer from Polyface Farms, is raising the alarm: mass poultry exterminations in the name of disease control are not only irrational but an assault on nature itself.

In a fiery testimony, Salatin deconstructs the mainstream narrative surrounding avian influenza, exposing the deep contradictions and outright failures of government-mandated poultry culling policies. Below, we explore his key points, along with five powerful verbatim excerpts that make his case crystal clear.

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Industrial Poultry Operations: The Real Disease Incubators

The avian flu hysteria conveniently ignores where outbreaks actually originate. Salatin points out a critical pattern:

“Remember, every time it starts, it starts in a concentrated animal feeding operation or some sort of industrial concentrated situation that's unhygienic, unsanitary and fully vaccinated, medicated, adulterated, pharmaceutical life and everything else you can imagine.”

Rather than acknowledging that factory farms—densely packed, artificially sustained, and immunologically compromised—are breeding grounds for disease, the industry instead scapegoats wild birds.

“When the industry blames wild birds, they always say, oh, it's these ducks, it's these geese, it's these wild critters that are bringing this in. Listen, any kind of production system that demonizes wildlife is automatically wrong.”

Salatin challenges us to think logically: if wild ducks and geese have coexisted with these viruses for thousands of years without being wiped out, why does modern poultry farming seem so uniquely vulnerable? The answer, he suggests, lies in the fragile, artificially propped-up immune systems of industrially raised birds.

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The Madness of Mass Extermination

Instead of working with nature, government policies take a brute-force approach. The standard response to any detected case of avian flu—whether in one bird or ten—is immediate, full-scale extermination. Salatin exposes the lunacy of this strategy:

“Now you would think that if the people in charge were actually thinking that, they would say, ‘Huh, we got a flock here of chickens, some got it, some didn't. Why don't we save the ones that didn't? We'll take their genetics and breed them, and maybe we'll actually build more, actually breed in more robust immune systems.’ Wow, fancy that. Wouldn't that be cool?”

Yet, rather than allowing natural immunity to take hold and using survivor birds to strengthen future generations, the government mandates total destruction:

“If you have 10,000 birds on a flock, one bird's got avian influenza, immediately, by government decree, all of them must be exterminated. All of them—survivors, non-survivors, everything.”

Salatin makes an essential point: disease resistance in nature doesn’t come from eradicating survivors. It comes from allowing natural selection to strengthen populations over time. The fact that modern agriculture refuses this basic principle reveals its disconnect from the biological realities of life.

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Building Immunity Through Regenerative Practices

Salatin doesn’t just critique the system—he offers a clear alternative. Instead of factory-farmed poultry being raised in confined spaces on genetically modified feed, he proposes a system that mirrors nature. And the evidence is already there:

“Back many years ago, when high-path avian influenza hit Indochina—remember when it came through Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia? Now, the UK did some experiments. They found that if a chicken eats two fresh blades of grass a day—two blades of fresh grass a day—she doesn't get avian influenza.”

At Polyface Farms, chickens eat well beyond two blades of fresh grass per day. Their immune systems thrive in environments that encourage movement, sunlight, fresh air, and natural diets. This is a stark contrast to the caged, artificially sustained, and pharmaceutical-dependent birds of industrial farms.

Salatin’s core philosophy is that health comes from ecological harmony, not from fear-driven extermination campaigns. His farm operates on the principle that robust immune systems—whether in animals or humans—are built through exposure to natural conditions, not by living in sterilized, medicated bubbles.

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The Ultimate Takeaway: We Must Restore Sanity to Agriculture

The final takeaway from Salatin’s testimony is a powerful indictment of our modern food system. Everything we are told about avian flu, from its origins to its "solutions," is upside down:

“Whatever you're hearing about avian influenza, I don't know whether it's true or not. I don't trust basically anything the government says anymore. But even if it is true, the remedy is opposite what it ought to be. The whole thing is upside down and backwards, and it's time to restore some sanity to our agriculture system.”

The question we must ask ourselves is simple: Why is the system designed to destroy life rather than nurture it?

If our goal were truly to create healthy, resilient food sources, we would prioritize genetic diversity, natural immunity, and ecological balance. Instead, the response to disease outbreaks is to double down on the very system that created them in the first place.

Joel Salatin has laid bare the insanity of industrial agriculture’s approach to avian flu. Now, it’s up to us—the farmers, the consumers, the thinkers—to demand a radical shift toward regenerative, nature-aligned food production.

The future of our food system depends on it.

To learn more about Avian Flu, visit the Greenmedinfo.com database on the subject here.

A Note About PolyFace

I had the great pleasure of speaking at the “Two Days of Truth 2024” event at PolyFace in gorgeous West Virginia. You can watch my two presentations below:

1. A New Model of Toxicological Risk with Sayer Ji: Live at Polyface Farms

2. Unique Detoxification Strategies with Sayer Ji: At Polyface Farms

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