Duck breeder Damien Dubos (d) receives the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau (c), and the president of the local Chamber of Agriculture, Bernard Malabirade (g), on October 2, 2023, in Labarthète (Gers ) (AFP/Valentine CHAPUIS)
Affected in the spring by avian flu, duck breeder Damien Dubos is certain: “If the vaccine did not arrive, it was over” for his farm in Gers which on Monday was one of the first to carry out live immunization as “a relief”.
On this farm which he manages with his two brothers, Mr. Dubos currently takes care of “10,790 ducks” but, while he welcomes the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau, who has come to launch the national waterfowl vaccination campaign , impossible to see the tip of a beak or the reflection of a plumage.
A security perimeter is installed a few meters from the shed where the chicks are vaccinated and only the minister and the farmer, dressed in suitable overalls and caps as well as plastic overshoes, will be able to observe the beginnings of the secure operation.
“How does it work? It’s simple, you isolate a batch of ducks, it’s a fairly precise vaccination, that’s why we need trained vaccinators and veterinarians to supervise them, then it lasts exactly one half a second per duck,” Mr. Fesneau explained to the press.
“It is a vaccination in two injections, one that we will do from ten days of age and we will have to do a booster 18 days later, the objective being that the animals are immunized at maximum at six weeks. of age”, Alice Machet, the veterinarian who supervised the vaccination at Mr. Dubos, told AFP.
– Losses in billions of euros –
Avian flu affected France from 2015 to 2017 and then almost continuously since the end of 2020.
Tasting of foie gras at a duck breeder from the Gers during a visit by the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau (c), to Labarthète, October 2, 2023 (AFP/Valentine CHAPUIS)
The country has euthanized tens of millions of poultry in recent years (10 million in 2022-2023 for example) and economic losses amount to billions of euros.
To break this spiral, France has decided to make vaccination compulsory in farms of more than 250 ducks (excluding breeding ducks) from October 1, with the State covering 85% of the cost of 100 million euros of this initial vaccination campaign.
Waterfowl – raised for foie gras or meat – are targeted because they are very sensitive to the virus. They spread it into the environment before they even show symptoms, which encourages its spread.
For the minister, the start of this mass immunization (64 million ducks to be vaccinated in 2,700 farms in 2023-2024, according to the ministry), “it is a moment of both hope and renewed optimism even if all is not won.”
“We must never be arrogant and too sure of things, but (…) we can have good hopes that we will have a more serene season,” he said.
“It’s a great day for us,” Bernard Malabirade, president of the Gers Chamber of Agriculture, one of the main foie gras producing departments which has around 500 breeders, told AFP. “We have been caught in the turmoil of this repeated avian influenza crisis for seven years in a department which has unfortunately been one of the most regularly affected.”
– “Soon the beginning of the end”? –
“We are starting again by giving real hope to the breeders but also to all the employees of the sectors, the canners, the transporters, etc. we must imagine in what psychological state are all the people who work in these duck sectors”, a- he said.
Trip by Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau (d) to a duck breeder in Gers, October 2, 2023 in Labarthète (AFP/Valentine CHAPUIS)
“I hope that it is soon the beginning of the end of this terrible adventure”, adds the director of the interprofessional committee of Palmipèdes à foie gras (Cifog), Marie-Pierre Pé, while the socialist deputy of Gers David Taupiac greets certainly the “important” step of vaccination but also insists on the need for the “dedensification” of livestock farms and their geographical deconcentration to prevent the spread of epidemics.
In his farm, Damien Dubos wants to believe in the light at the end of the tunnel. “We have made significant investments, for the moment, everything we have done has not worked, we really hope that this vaccine will save us and save the sector, quite simply.”
© 2023 AFP
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