Not related but The price of poultry has gone up significantly in the GTA, and a friend who works for the government informed me that there is an outbreak of bird flu in Ontario that's affecting poultry farms. Unfortunately, farmers can't talk about it due to ag-gag laws.
The Canada Food Inspection Agency publishes weekly estimates of the number of birds affected by highly pathogenic avian influenza infections. The numbers seem relatively high (any number above zero is concerning), but they have barely increased since January:
Week ending 2023-01-18: 748,000 birds affected in Ontario, 7,051,000 in Canada [1]
Week ending 2023-03-22: 749,000 birds affected in Ontario, 7,173,000 in Canada [2]
Unsurprising. Over 58 million US chickens have died of the H5N1 bird flu in the last year. Although it seems to have slowed down considerably in the last two months. Currently, South America is having a lot of problems with the same strain.
