Tue 12 January 2021:
At least 600,000 ducks have been culled in France over the past two weeks to try to halt the spread of a severe strain of bird flu that is ripping through poultry farms in the south-west of the country.
The highly pathogenic H5N8 virus was first detected in a bird in a pet shop on the Mediterranean island of Corsica in November before spreading to duck farms on the mainland in December.
On Monday, Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie told local radio station France Bleu Occitanie “there are six proven outbreaks in the Gers department and 180 across the country.”
In a press statement, Denormandie said the authorities are accelerating measures to double the slaughter capacity and support breeders with financial compensation.
The highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak was first detected in the Chalosse region of Landes department, which has a high number of duck farms and is famed for the production of foie gras, a gastronomic delicacy made from the fattened livers of ducks or geese.
It later spread around the neighboring departments of Hautes-Pyrénées, Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Gers. To prevent its further spread, authorities announced preventive slaughterings from Dec. 24 in the five-kilometer radius of poultry and breeding farms.
“The virus is stronger than us. New clusters are constantly emerging,” the head of France’s CIFOQ federation of foie gras producers, Marie-Pierre Pe, told Agence France-Presse.
Officials in Belgium said on last Thursday they had culled three contaminated poultry flocks – one in Menin, in the west of the country, another in Dinant in the south and a third in Dixmude in western Flanders.
Belgium’s federal food safety agency AFSCA, which has ordered poultry owners to lock up their animals to avoid contamination, said that 20 cases of the virus had been found in wild birds.
Last Wednesday the head of France’s chamber of agriculture, Sebastien Windsor, called on for “radical measures” to try to restore confidence in export markets such as China which announced this week it was suspending French poultry imports over the virus.
Outbreaks have also been reported in India and South Korea. In India, tens of thousands of poultry will be slaughtered after an outbreak of deadly avian influenza was found to have killed scores of birds across the country.
At least six Indian states have stepped up efforts this week to contain two strains of bird flu – H5N1 and H5N8 – after the deaths of thousands of migratory birds, ducks, crows and chickens.
South Korea’s agriculture ministry said on Thursday that it had so far culled 14.9m poultry since identifying its first farm-linked, highly pathogenic bird flu case in late November.
Besides France and Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Britain and Ireland have also reported bird flu outbreaks since the winter began.
FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:
TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent
FACEBOOK (CLICK HERE)
https://web.facebook.com/ipindependent
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
