A few days ago, a friend forwarded a video to me which warns of the avian flu as having the potential to cause a next global pandemic. In the video, the person also cautions people about eating chicken and turkey.
After watching the entire video, I did a quick search on the internet and indeed, it is true that bird flu is already on the rise in the west, spreading to humans and pets.
I was in two minds if I should share this news lest I be accused of spreading undue worry. So I decided to first checked with my friend, Ivan Ho, who runs Jungle Farm, if his chickens and ducks would be safe from the avian flu should it become a concern in our country.
I was relieved when Ivan assured me that in their 20 years of running the chicken farm, his birds have all be free of any diseases. He also gives them homeopathy treatment to ensure they are in optimum health. For new readers, there is absolutely no slaughter on Ivan’s Jungle Farm. The chickens and ducks provide eggs, sold as Kampung Harvest eggs, which I’ve written about many times through the years because they are truly cruelty-free eggs.
So now, just in case we need to rely on eggs for protein (if there is any avian flu pandemic), at least I would know I can depend on Kampung Harvest eggs.
I also asked Ivan what he feeds his dogs; he says they cook daily for their dogs. They have dogs and cows who are more than 20 years old living on their farm, and his chickens and ducks are more than 10 years old. He also has cats and they hunt for food on the farm. What a wonderful and safe place they have there, away from our urban and concrete jungle. It is truly a back-t0-nature dwelling place.
Today, I found this article by CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/18/health/bird-flu-pet-food-cat-deaths/index.html
It is a very long article, but please do give it a read, especially if you are raw-feeding your pets.
It pays to take heed and be prepared for any eventuality.
I don’t particularly like to use the phrase “a blessing in diguise” because I believe that 50% of life is governed by “dumb luck” (pure chance, the “dumb” here meaning having no voice, being meaningless and senseless). But after Juno got so sick, suspected of contracting coccidia infection from raw food in early November 2024, I had already started to ensure that everyone could eat cooked food. By “cooked”, I mean home-cooked, canned and kibble.
It wasn’t such a difficult task at all because the Monsters ate whatever that’s served, the Blondies and Riley already didn’t quite like raw food, Ginger and Tabs were advised to go on cooked food due to their age and both were totally okay with it. As for Juno, it was as though she knew she had to eat cooked food, so Juno also quickly transitioned from her former 100% raw food diet to cooked food. Now, she doesn’t like raw food anymore.
That leaves only Gerald and Creamy. Gerald still loves his raw gizzards and raw chicken but is willing to eat canned food. Creamy is the biggest problem now because he doesn’t want anything except raw food when he comes for his snacks. But since Creamy has a home at the back road, I assume his owner feeds him daily and he comes to our house for some novel raw food as a snack. Or he comes for full meals when his owner travels off during festive periods. I’ll have to slowly teach Creamy to eat cooked food too.
This is just in preparation of any eventuality where we should only feed cooked food to our cats. Let’s hope there won’t be another pandemic. The last one caused so much harm and loss on a terrifying global scale.
Talking about pandemics, I do recall many years ago when my father was still alive, there was a time when he told us a Tibetan sage had warned everyone about an impending pandemic/disease which would be transmitted in the air, by droplets. Shortly after that, the 2004 SARS pandemic happened.
And when I was still a child, we lived in Kampar and we used to visit this wise old Chinese man in Gopeng whom we addressed as “Low Si” (which means “teacher” in Cantonese). He was a typical old Chinese man who wore a white top and black pants and he had a long white flowing beard, pretty much like the wise old sages you might see in Chinese kungfu movies. Low Si told us that he foresaw a time when our water would be contaminated and we would have no drinking water, so to prepare for it, he had a well dug at the back of his house. Yes, a well, to draw ground water in times of crisis. I remember this, even though I was very young at that time.
The moral of the two stories?
Well…be prepared. That is all.
And personally, I am not a skeptic. I’m not the type who makes it my life mission to debunk every piece of news of being “fake” just to prove that someone had over-reacted. Whatever news I receive which has some probability of happening, I will take heed of it and I will prepare for it. But that’s just me. When you have dependents, it pays to be safe than sorry.
Low Si looked a bit like this character, but he always wore a white top with black pants. The last I saw him was when I was 10 years old, I think, because we moved to Kuala Kangsar after that.
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