Mugron (France) (AFP)
The duck industry in the Landes, where the bird flu surveillance zone has just been extended to around one hundred municipalities, is mobilizing to face this "trauma" and its potentially devastating effects for breeders.
“Everyone is mobilized,” says Marie-Pierre Pé, spokesperson for the Interprofessional Committee for Foie Gras (Cifog).
"Administration, veterinarians, production organizations and chambers of agriculture who lend a hand to the administration to identify farms and organize depopulation, employees of slaughterhouses, laboratories, etc ...", she adds.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Agriculture issued an order extending the perimeter within which a preventive slaughter can be ordered in an area of 3 km around a source of contamination with the H5N8 virus.
It concerns about a hundred municipalities, mainly in the south of the Landes, in Chalosse, but also in Béarn (Pyrénées-Atlantiques).
At the ministry, it is specified that this text sets up a "legal framework" for the weeks to come.
"This decree does not order the slaughter of all feathered animals in these municipalities", specifies Ms. Pé.
"We are still in prevention, the challenge being to go faster than the virus" and in particular to ensure that it does not spread further east, in the Gers.
Eleven outbreaks were detected in Chalosse, the historic heart of Landes foie gras production, she said, making Landes the department most affected by the episode of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) which has affected France since the mid-November.
Last week, preventive culls of 40,000 ducks were ordered in this area.
- "Stop the fire" -
Serge Mora, a duck farmer in Mugron, in Chalosse, assures us that some producers are "in severe psychological distress".
"There are people who are at the bottom of the bucket. We are disillusioned," adds this departmental president of Modef.
"We must not forget that this is the third time in 5 years", after the winters of 2015/2016 and 2016/2017, that avian flu affects the department of duck king (50% of French production), says- he.
Without counting the Covid which has made many breeders lose the outlet for restaurateurs, adds the breeder who estimates at "20,000 euros of loss of gross margin" "the Covid effect" on his farm (2,400 open-air ducks) .
According to Hervé Dupouy, president of the palmipeds section of the FNSEA des Landes and member of the Cifog board, "it's a real trauma for the breeders. We cannot stay in a situation like this. We must stop it. fire".
"It is not excluded that we further expand this area (surveillance). Will that be enough? I do not know", adds the breeder of Castelnau-Tursan (28,000 ducks per year), who speaks of "real disaster, not only for the producers of palmipeds but for those of guinea fowl, quail, etc.".
"We are fighting against a set of extremely unfavorable elements", concludes Ms. Pé, "the virus is very present in the environment" and circulates actively in wildlife.
In Chalosse, "the farms are very close to each other and therefore contamination by the air, step by step, is to be feared. Finally, the gods have fallen on our heads with the storm Bella, with the wind of west that can push the spread east. "
© 2020 AFP