the dismay of poultry farmers in the face of an unprecedented avian flu epidemic

Published

FRANCE 3

Article written by

H. Hug, L. Le Moigne, D. Fuet, S. Lacombe – France 3

France Televisions

Chickens and ducks could be missing this year due to bird flu. Since March, 15 million poultry have been culled. An unprecedented crisis which notably affects the Vendée, the second department to produce the most poultry.

In Vendée, the avian flu epidemic spread at high speed. In two months, all the ducks in the department had to be slaughtered and practically all the chickens. Nine million poultry are affected. There remain the breeders, alone in their empty buildings, forced to disinfect everything. One of them says he sensed strange behavior in his ducks in mid-March. “I didn’t feel them as usual on Wednesday evening, and the next morning I had 25 dead”he recalls.

All the ducks on the farm are then euthanized. Since then, Pierre-Jean Besson has been trying to understand how they could have been contaminated. He raised 18,000 ducks, which were 15 per square meter. How could the virus have entered the building? “Through ventilation, through small windows”he explains. “Even if they had been raised in the open air, they could have been contaminated too, since wild animals got it.”


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