Avian influenza "out of control" in the South-West: massive slaughter expected

A "finding of helplessness" in front of a situation which has become "out of control": faced with the surge in the number of farms contaminated by avian flu in the South-West, foie gras professionals urged the health authorities on Thursday to proceed with more massive preventive slaughter of ducks.

"We are asking for a crawl space

, we see that the situation is out of control, that we no longer control the virus. There is no other solution," a declared Hervé Dupouy, breeder in Castelnau-Tursan and president of the FNSEA palmipeds section of the Landes.

"We depopulate

in the whole of the department, and after we make a crawl space and in two months, we can put animals back and start producing again", he pleaded, pleading against the "slowness of the administration", according to him "phenomenal".

On the side of the interprofession of foie gras Cifog, it is reported that the decision to extend preventive slaughter is expected very soon.

"We are waiting for the evolution of the strategy to fight" against the epizootic "since the depopulation strategy is not sufficient", declared its director, Marie-Pierre Pé.

"We have a virus which is stronger than us"

So far, the authorities have killed all the palmipeds within a three-kilometer area around the identified outbreaks.

Other poultry such as chickens and turkeys are also supposed to be slaughtered when they have access to the outdoors.

"We have a virus that is stronger than us. There are always new outbreaks that appear," lamented Marie-Pierre Pé, estimating at a hundred the number of outbreaks identified in France, concentrated in the South-West, cradle traditional foie gras.

The latest report communicated by the Ministry of Agriculture, stopped on January 1, reported 61 confirmed outbreaks of avian influenza (commonly called avian influenza) in farms and animal shops, including 48 in the Landes department alone.

Asked Wednesday, the ministry did not wish to comment immediately.

Marie-Pierre Pé drew up a "statement of helplessness" in the face of the "galloping inflation" of outbreaks and suspicions of contamination and "a virus that goes faster than us".

During the winters of 2015-16 and 2016-17, episodes of avian influenza led to the slaughter of millions of ducks and prolonged production stoppages.

The industry had to invest to strengthen biosecurity.

These investments can be counted "in hundreds of thousands of euros" in the Chalosse basin, in the Landes, even where influenza is currently raging again, according to the director of Cifog.

A strain spotted in mid-November in France

In total, according to Ms. Pé, "more than 5 million" palmipeds are being farmed for their foie gras in a large production area straddling the Landes, Gers and Pyrénées-Atlantiques.

Cifog called on Wednesday for "a strengthening of the human resources of the State services in the field in order to accelerate" the fight against the epizootic.

The H5N8 strain of avian influenza, which is also rife in the rest of Europe, was spotted in France in mid-November, and for the first time in a farm in early December, triggering in particular an embargo from China to with regard to French poultry.

France hopes to soon conclude an agreement with China to continue to export to it from the territories that have remained free.

The imperative is "to manage this crisis quickly and well, including through radical measures, to show [to importing countries] how our health system is effective and helps to contain the disease", emphasized Wednesday Isabelle Chmitelin, the Managing Director of Chambers of Agriculture France.