PARIS (Reuters) – A new outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has been identified in Vendée, the first in this western department, announced Monday the ANVOL, the French inter-professional group in the poultry sector, citing a prefectural decree.
This outbreak was detected in a farm of around 13,000 turkeys in the town of Beaufou, about twenty kilometers north of La Roche-sur-Yon, Yann Nédélec, director of ANVOL, told Reuters.
The appearance of a new outbreak in this western region located on certain migratory routes can be worrying insofar as it is also home to many farms, underlined Yann Nédélec.
According to a statement published on the website of the Ministry of Agriculture, which does not include this outbreak identified in Vendée, “as of January 3, 2022, France has 34 outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in breeding , 20 cases in wild fauna and three cases in backyard “, the latter having been observed in the east of France.
These outbreaks have led to the slaughter of more than 600,000 poultry since the end of November, said Yann Nédélec.
In this count, around a quarter of breeding outbreaks were detected in the Nord department, where the first cases were identified at the end of November. The remaining three quarters concern the departments of the South-West, affected since mid-December (Landes mainly, but also Gers and Pyrénées-Atlantiques), which had been strongly affected by the epizootic last winter.
The outbreaks in the North of France are now under control, but this is not the case in the South-West, which is home to numerous farms of palmipeds, added Nédélec.
According to Marie-Pierre Pé, director of the interprofession of foie gras Cifog, the situation is not as worrying at this stage as during the previous crisis, between autumn 2020 and spring 2021, when 3.5 million poultry had to be slaughtered to limit the spread of the virus.
“We have greatly reduced the number of animals, they are all indoors, but we have to go quickly in the race against the virus because it gets easily into farms,” she told Reuters.
(Sybille report from La Hamaide, French version Myriam Rivet, edited by Nicolas Delame)