Avian flu has returned to the Southwest with a new case detected in a private duck farm in Mombrier (Gironde), we learned from the prefecture on Saturday. The owner had bought, without knowing it, contaminated animals in a barnyard in Seine-et-Marne. Its 79 ducks had to be euthanized, specifies the prefecture, confirming information from the regional press.
To avoid any risk of spreading the virus to other farms, regulated protection and surveillance zones have been set up within a radius of 3 and 10 kilometers by prefectural decree. About thirty municipalities in the north of the Gironde are concerned, in an area still far from the breeding areas of the poultry industry, located further south in New Aquitaine.
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This is the second case of avian influenza in the department, a month after the discovery of the corpse of an infected wild goose in a park in Blanquefort. On an unprecedented scale during last winter and spring, the bird flu episode led to the slaughter in France of 21 million animals (ducks, laying hens, turkeys, etc.). The recovery is difficult, for lack of chicks and ducklings in sufficient number to fill the farms.
Mainly located in recent weeks in the Great West, the virus continues to strike with 18 French farms infected since the beginning of August, according to a latest report from the Ministry of Agriculture.