It is an “out of control” situation that breeders have been deploring since January 2022. France is experiencing the most severe episode of avian flu in the country, leading to the slaughter of ten million poultry according to ministry data. of Agriculture and Food communicated to L’Express this Wednesday, March 30. A record figure.
Since the first case identified in the north of France, at the end of November 2021, more than 1,000 poultry farms have been infected (1,084 confirmed outbreaks), including 493 in Vendée, where the authorities are in the process of emptying the farms, including including healthy animals as a preventive measure. In a few weeks, this department so far unscathed found itself more heavily affected than that of Landes (231 cases), regularly affected by avian flu since 2015. The number of outbreaks is also increasing in the neighbors of Vendée: 78 in Loire-Atlantique and 101 in Maine-et-Loire.
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According to information communicated to AFP on March 23 by the Ministry of Agriculture, nearly half of the ten million animals euthanized came, on this date, from Pays de la Loire. This region is the second largest production area for French poultry after Brittany, where five infected farms (two in Morbihan, three in Ille-et-Vilaine) have recently been identified.
“Our priority is to prevent the virus from continuing to spread,” explained the Minister of Agriculture, Julien Denormandie, during a trip to Vendée on March 22. “It’s a psychological tsunami for breeders,” Christiane Lambert told AFP on March 23. President of the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA), majority in the agricultural world. She mentioned the “risk that 30% of French poultry will be slaughtered”. The guinea fowls were particularly “decimated”, she lamented.
A margin of progress
Interviewed in January 2022 by L’Express, Jean-Luc Guérin, professor of avian pathology and director of an Inrae infectiology laboratory at the National Veterinary School of Toulouse, believed that it was possible to avoid an exponential slaughter of beasts by improving certain things.
The professor mentioned in particular the three pillars which allow the control of animal epidemics: biosecurity, surveillance and – link still missing in Europe – vaccination. “For the moment, there is no vaccine with a marketing authorization against avian influenza. And even when there is, it should be added and not replaced the other preventive measures”, specified for his part Gilles Salvat, deputy director of the research division of the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (Anses), interviewed by AFP in January 2022.
“At present, the vaccination of animals is technically delicate. Indeed, it must be guaranteed that the vaccine is well adapted to the viruses present in the zone considered and that its implementation does not promote the inapparent circulation of the wild virus in vaccinated birds For Member States of the European Union, vaccination is prohibited because the available vaccine technologies do not allow it”, explains ANSES on his website.
Industrial repercussions
Poultry and foie gras professionals warn: because of the epizootic, supply will inevitably be reduced. These massive slaughters are followed by long phases without animals in the farms, called “sanitary voids”, suggesting a drop in the supply of chickens, turkeys and ducks. And the machine cannot be restarted quickly.
“For example, four months elapse between the arrival of a poult in a farm and the marketing of turkey meat”, notes the poultry interprofessional organization Anvol. “This situation is dramatic for breeders and will lead to a reduction in slaughtering activity, or even the temporary shutdown of certain sites. [industriels]“, anticipates the French poultry leader LDC. However, specifies the group, “it is too early to assess the direct impacts of this unprecedented crisis”.
“Dirty work”
According to the Confédération paysanne, breeders are sometimes asked to do the “dirty work” when the farm is infected: digging pits to “bury the dead animals on the farms or nearby”, or even to “stop the ventilation to cause the death of animals by asphyxiation”.
The Minister of Agriculture for his part invited “not to make generalities of a few cases”. “Today, each time, we favor other solutions than that. But in some cases, it can be authorized by derogation and permitted by the regulations, when it is deemed that it is the only solution to avoid situations where animals slowly die for days,” said Julien Denormandie.
Crises related to avian flu usually remain confined to the south-west of France. In 2021, nearly 500 outbreaks had been recorded in farms and 3.5 million animals, mainly ducks, had been slaughtered. Thirty-four European countries have been affected by the virus since its reappearance on the continent in the fall of 2021. In addition to French farms, those in northern Italy have been particularly affected, with 18 million poultry slaughtered, mainly from large farms.