The sudden outbreak of livestock contamination by the H5N1 virus, mainly in Vendée, made of this most severe episode that the country had known, accustomed to seeing cases focusing in southwestern farms.
Le Monde with AFP
A significantly heavy balance sheet than previous years due to unpublished outbreak in the Loire countries. Ten millions of poultry have been shot in France since November to stem the bird flu, we learned Wednesday, March 23 at the Ministry of Agriculture. This episode is the most severe as the country had known, accustomed to seeing cases focusing in southwestern farms.
Since the first case identified in the north of France, at the end of November, nearly a thousand farms were contaminated by the virus, at least 450 in Vendée, where the authorities are emptying poultry farms by Massive slaughter of sick animals – but also healthy – Preventatively.
In a few weeks, the balance sheet in this department previously unscathed has become much heavier than that of the Landes (231), a regularly affected production basin since 2015. The number of cases also increases in the bordering departments of the Vendée. : 70 in Loire-Atlantique, 58 in Maine-et-Loire.
The region of the Loire Countries hard hit
Nearly half of the ten million animals slaughtered in France because of this crisis come from the Pays de la Loire region, the second largest territory of production of French poultry after Brittany, where two cases have been recently identified . Usually, bird flu seizures remain globally circumscribed in the southwest, particularly duck farms for the production of foie gras. Last year, nearly 500 homes had been identified in farms and 3.5 million animals, mainly ducks, slaughtered.
According to the last bulletin of the national animal health epidemiosurveillance platform (ESA), the farms affected in Pays de la Loire are “mainly” “Palmipede farms (fat or skinny), but a great diversity of production types are affected: Mullard ducks, Beijing ducks, barbarism ducks, turkeys, quail, pheling, flesh chickens, laying hens. Reproductive farms are also affected “.
In the southwest, the number of homes “stabilizes, although new sporadic infection homes are always detected,” says the same source.
In total, thirty-four European countries were affected by the virus this year. In addition to French farms, those in northern Italy have been particularly affected, with 18 million poultry shot.