Time Magazine reporter Christine Gorman reports on her global health blog that Google Earth is being used by US poultry veterinarians to double-check the accuracy of coordinates for hen houses, in case an outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu virus requires quarantining decisions for poultry farms.

(Yes, she writes “double-check”, not “check”. If Google Earth were the only geospatial tool used for finding poultry farms in something as important as the defence against H5N1, I’d somehow be a little worried, as the geolocation and map data isn’t flawless, and isn’t expected to be, for a free product.)