The cows are to be slaughtered
And the sheep, too, of course.
The same for the hogs sighing in their pens—
And as for the chickens...

"On the Farm," the typically worried Charles Simic poem in the magazine this week, seems especially ominous in light of last week's terrifying bird-flu story by Michael Specter, which is one of those pieces you read and immediately, gratefully, forget. Or else it comes back to you in uneasy pieces, clucking "Do something!" But what? Ben Greenman wonders the same thing:

[BG:] What can be done to stop the next big pandemic from starting?
[MS:] Nothing. At least, nothing can be done to prevent a virus from taking on new characteristics. But by closely monitoring the spread, and by examining the genetic structure of the virus, we can get a sense of how to develop a vaccine and how to make better drugs. Then we would need to actually spend money to make the vaccines and the drugs, and this is something the world puts little priority on. There are many competing health problems in most countries. So it is difficult to tell a political leader or a pharmaceutical company that makes vaccines that they should invest hundreds of millions of dollars on something that may happen, when there are so many other problems that already exist.

Greenman also asks "What does it take for a virus to cross the species barrier?" which bears a funny if probably unintended resemblance to another common question about poultry motivation.

Fighting the Flu [Michael Specter interview, New Yorker]
Watching for the Next Pandemic [On Point; radio inteview with Specter, Laurie Garrett, etc.]
Talking to the Little Birdies [Simic, American Poems]