The Landes prefecture announced Thursday in a press release, preventive slaughter of 40,000 ducks in twenty-five farms in the department, to deal with bird flu.
It ensures that the losses of the breeders will be compensated.
To date, there are eighteen avian influenza outbreaks in six French departments.
Massive preventive slaughter of ducks has been decided in the Landes to "avoid as much as possible a strong spread" of bird flu detected in 18 homes in France, the Landes prefecture announced Thursday in a statement.
To date, the department is one of the most affected, along with Corsica, with seven outbreaks of H5N8 detected.
Some 40,000 ducks from 25 farms will be slaughtered, according to Serge Mora, president of Modef (movement for the defense of family farmers) in the Landes.
After "the recent contamination of two duck farms located in the Landes in the heart of Chalosse, a territory with a high poultry density", the prefecture said it chose "to adapt the disease prevention strategy in order to avoid as much as possible possible a strong spread of the virus ".
She decided to "proceed without delay to preventive depopulation targeted within a radius of 3 kilometers around the homes of Sort-en-Chalosse and Bergouey", in the south of the department.
Only ducks are concerned
Until now, health protection measures have been limited to the slaughter of animals from the affected farm, disinfection of the site, banning the movement of poultry in the environment close to the outbreak and surveillance around the outbreak.
This time, all the farms will be slaughtered.
Only ducks "because of their very high sensitivity to the H5N8 virus" are concerned by this slaughter, and, within a radius of 1 km, other poultry which are not confined.
The losses of breeders will be compensated, assures the prefecture, which is also setting up psychological support for farmers.
At the same time, surveillance zones of 10 kilometers around the outbreaks of Sort-en-Chalosse and Bergouey have been set up and "all ducks must be sheltered, as well as other poultry".
The contamination "will not stop", this preventive slaughter "is a sword in the water", estimates Serge Mora.
Modef calls for the slaughter of only sick animals: "farmers want to make a living from their work", says Serge Mora.
"I see the scenario of 2017, we will depopulate everything and we will have operators without activity for seven, eight or nine months," he fears.
Modef calls for demonstrations on Saturday in front of the Landes prefecture.
Eighteen homes in six French departments
To date, eighteen avian influenza outbreaks have been detected in six French departments: seven in Corsica, one in Yvelines, seven in Landes, one in Vendée, one in Hautes-Pyrénées and one in Deux- Sevres.
State services recall that, like several European countries, France has been facing an episode of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) since mid-November.
The virus in question (H5N8) exclusively affects birds.
It is not transmissible to humans.
The disease circulates actively in wildlife and manifests itself on the occasion of migrations towards the South.
These infectious outbreaks revive the memory of the crises of winters 2015-16 and 2016-17 for the foie gras industry, marked by massive slaughter, even if the economic impact feared in the immediate future is rather that of Covid-19 and restaurants closed due to the pandemic.