THE FIGURES REPORTED IN MARK Carwardine’s opinion piece (February 2023) on last summer’s devastating avian flu outbreak are almost beyond comprehension. In our ‘animal-loving’ country it’s apparent that we are prepared to tolerate facilities that house in excess of a million birds!

SARS-CoV-2 should have taught us some valuable lessons about zoonotic diseases – when pathogenic viruses spill over from animals to humans. Covid-19 probably originated in a wet market in Wuhan, so it gave some the excuse to pin the blame on the Chinese. But we need to wake up – and quickly – because the next pandemic could just