A chicken farm in Crannes-en-Champagne, in Sarthe, on February 3, 2017 (AFP/Archives/JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER)
No respite for French poultry farmers: after hitting the Southwest again this year, avian flu has become “uncontrollable” a little further north, in Vendée, triggering a new campaign of massive slaughter, adding to the four million poultry already euthanized this season.
“We have eliminated around 1.2 million animals and it is estimated that we still have three million animals that remain to be slaughtered” in the Great West, the Ministry of Agriculture told the press on Friday.
It is a decision “logical, necessary, obligatory, to be executed as quickly as possible”, estimates with AFP the president of the FNSEA union in Vendée, Brice Guyau.
“We have suffered considerable losses. If nothing is done, everyone could end up being impacted”, he continues, referring to a situation “that has become uncontrollable since February 28”.
Contaminations are multiplying in a sector hitherto rather spared, covering several departments (Vendée, Loire-Atlantique, Maine-et-Loire, Deux-Sèvres).
It is in Vendée that the situation is most critical. The number of homes jumped in a few days: there are now 187 in more than 100 municipalities in the department.
“This will have serious consequences for all of the Pays de la Loire and even elsewhere”, with “phenomenal economic losses which are borne in whole or in part by the State” and a “certain” impact on the capacity of poultry production “in the weeks to come”, underlines Christophe Labour, president of the poultry section of the regional branch of the FNSEA.
“Despite the great collective mobilization of the entire French poultry industry, this unexpected rebound in avian influenza risks profoundly reducing the availability of foie gras, like other poultry products”, also provides the foie gras interprofession Cifog.
The extent of this crisis already exceeds that of last year, especially confined to the Southwest. Nearly 500 outbreaks had been identified in farms and 3.5 million animals, mainly ducks, slaughtered.
This season, since the first case detected at the end of November, 649 outbreaks have been recorded in farms, according to the ministry. And more than four million poultry have been euthanized, most of them in the Southwest, even before the new mass slaughter.
– “Strategic” farms –
In the Great West, “the means of elimination but also of storage awaiting elimination (…) are gradually increased to meet the needs”, according to the office of the Minister of Agriculture.
The sector has many farms, some of which are “strategic” because they house animals used for breeding. There are also hatcheries which give birth to future chickens, laying hens and ducks, “really key for the resumption of activity in a few weeks when we have cleaned up the area”, notes the ministry.
A hatchery was contaminated, “all the others are protected and the objective is to create a buffer zone all around the hatcheries to preserve our productive capacities for the future”, he continues.
In the Southwest, affected by avian flu for the fourth time since 2015, producers are counting on these hatcheries to fill farms emptied by the virus with ducklings.
These repeated crises generate considerable costs for professionals (production stoppages, closure of export markets) and the State (compensation for slaughtered animals and resulting economic losses).
The health agency Anses is working to understand the factors of the recent outbreak of cases.
Among the tracks, the role of the “ascending migrations” (from south to north) of wild birds carrying the virus, “the gales that there may have been in recent weeks” which favor its dissemination in the air, “ probably also security flaws”, outlines the minister’s office.
It will once again be necessary to “learn lessons” from the episode, anticipates the ministry, “to build a renewed roadmap” with professionals to “prevent this from happening again in the future”.
After last year’s crisis, it was notably decided to produce fewer ducks in places and to impose the confinement of poultry when the risk is “high” – this has been the case since the beginning of November.
Thirty-four European countries have been affected by the virus this year, according to the French animal health epidemiological surveillance platform (ESA).
© 2022 AFP
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