The Bird (Flu) Table and The Battle Rhythm...

Aithchooo....

So, as of 1pm this afternoon, we have Bird Flu. Not just any old bird flu, but the kind of bird flu that will kill us all (© Daily Mail, probably).

I've learned, thanks to the consistently brilliant BBC News website, that there are at least 15 types of bird flu. We've got strain H5 and there are 9 types of H5. We've got H5N1.

The BBC News also shows us, helpfully, how H5N1 might mutate further and really actually kill us all... Have a go, it's like some morbid computer game...



Anyway, to try and make sure it goes no further than taking down Bernard Matthews, DEFRA has an Exotic Animal Disease Generic Contingency Plan. I feel better already.

Part of the EADGCP (for short) is the Battle Rhythm... This sounds like it might be some tribal drumming technique to pass the news of feathery-death from one (technologically-limited and telephony-poor) Suffolk village to the next, but it's actually just this timetable (click to zoom)...



This makes provision for early-morning and early-evening "Birdtable" meetings. Now I have no idea what these are - someone well-attended at management training courses will tell me - but I imagine they're a kind of meeting where people can arrive, contribute and leave, and not everyone has to be there at the same time, or at all. (If I'm right, I'll take my MBA now...)

I wonder if they might consider renaming these, given that it might hold up proceedings if they have to clear 2,600 dead turkeys off the birdtable before they can start...