Europe 1 with AFP 4:14 p.m., August 01, 2022

A case of bird flu has been detected in Feuillères in the Somme in a turkey farm, leading to the slaughter of some 8,000 turkeys present on the farm, the Somme prefecture announced on Monday.

“A first outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza” was confirmed on Saturday in this Somme farm.

A case of bird flu has been detected in Feuillères in the Somme in a turkey farm, leading to the slaughter of some 8,000 turkeys present on the farm, the Somme prefecture announced on Monday.

“A first outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza” was confirmed on Saturday in this Somme farm, the prefecture said in a press release, specifying that to avoid any risk of spreading the virus to other farms, “regulated areas protection and surveillance have been put in place within a radius of 3 to 10 km".

The State mobilized alongside breeders

In these perimeters, “all places of detention of poultry and captive birds are subject to specific prescriptions”, in particular the prohibition of “movements of poultry and captive birds”.

State services "are mobilized alongside the breeder who will be compensated for the losses suffered", specified the prefecture.

In addition, the discovery of dead wild birds should be reported to the Sagir monitoring network, she added.

Nearly 20,000 poultry slaughtered in 2022

Since November, France has identified more than 1,300 outbreaks of avian influenza in farms, resulting in the slaughter of almost 20 million poultry on the territory.

In comparison, during the last episode of avian flu in 2020/2021, the country had nearly 500 outbreaks and 3.5 million poultry were slaughtered.

Avian influenza is seasonal because the virus is transmitted by migrating birds from Asia.

The epizootic generally begins to develop in October in Europe and continues until April.

But for the first time, wild birds contaminated farms this year during their migration from southern countries, which led to a second wave which affected areas usually spared, such as Périgord and Pays de Loire. .

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Leading to considerable additional costs for breeders, the sectors had more difficulty in recovering their production, the virus having also reached the hatcheries, the first link in the chain.

The overall provisional envelope of the Ministry of Agriculture provides 760 million euros to cover damage related to avian flu.