If wild birds and free range farms are the main risks in the spread of H5N1, how did a country of backyard farms, in the middle of the worst affected zone, see 93% of its outbreaks concentrated in intensive farms? Interestingly, in Laos there is next to no contact between ‘backyard’ farms and the intensive production farms of the capital; the capital’s intensive farms, on the other hand, are commonly integrated into foreign poultry companies (GRAIN 2006). It is useful to compare the Laos case with those of neighbouring countries Thailand and Vietnam, which are two of.
