Interview
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Denis Perreau, national secretary of the Confédération paysanne, notes that the confinement of poultry since November has failed to preserve farms from an epidemic outbreak. According to him, the problem stems less from open-air breeding than from the industrialization of the sector.
Here we go again for a round of bird flu. Currently, more than 150 farms are infected in France, compared to around 180 at the same time last year. While the first case had been detected in the North in laying hens at the end of November, two thirds of the outbreaks are now located in the Landes department. If the Ministry of Agriculture wants to be reassuring, the outbreak has been meteoric in recent days. Sign for the Peasant Confederation of the failure of the health strategy which aimed to avoid a new disaster this year. In a statement co-signed by the Movement for the Defense of Family Farmers (Modef) on Thursday, the union believes that “peasants are the turkeys of the farce”.
At the end of December, the bird flu had already led to the slaughter of around 650,000 poultry in one month. Last year, the epidemic was stopped after the eradication of 3.5 million ducks, geese, chickens or laying hens. For Denis Perreau, national secretary of the Confédération paysanne, the operation of large poultry farms helps to spread the virus.
Faced with the meteoric rise in cases of avian influenza…