Chicken Soup For The Stupid

Tuesday's New York Sun reported on the explosive growth of live-poultry shops in the city, up from six to 80 in the last 25 years. Mostly a local color piece, the article included only a brief mention of avian flu.

Maybe we're just paranoid after the World Health Organization warned that the avian flu virus, aka H5N1, was capable of killing two-thirds of the global population within months, but we're left sort of wondering: Why the hell are these places allowed to operate?!?!

We understand that immigrants like to take their fresh-poultry traditions with them, but this isn't rural Thailand, and we should strive to keep it that way. Can't the patrons of these shops buy their birds from wretched Midwestern agribusiness animal slums, just like everybody else?