Samples taken from Quebec farms suspected of being infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza will not be sent to Winnipeg on Friday, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of Quebec (MAPAQ) having finally decided to keep his lab open for now.
Posted at 11:35 a.m.
“I am informed that the laboratory will be minimally open tomorrow [samedi] and that we will be able to receive the samples taken today for analysis,” MAPAQ spokesperson Yohan Dallaire Boily said by email Friday morning.
“For the following days, the MAPAQ is currently looking with the teams at the availability of everyone. »
The ministry had initially planned to close its laboratory for the four days of the long Easter holiday, and reopen it only next Tuesday, when cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza have just been detected in farms, a first in Quebec.
The Quebec samples would then have been sent for analysis to the laboratory of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a decision that had “stunned” the Dr Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, professor at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Montreal. Sending samples from Quebec farms to Manitoba risks lengthening the wait for results by a day, and delaying certain interventions by as much, while “controlling this virus is a question of reaction time”, explained to us the Dr Vaillancourt Thursday evening.
A third outbreak of H5N1 was detected on a farm in Estrie on Thursday, after the first two the day before. Two commercial farms were affected. Canards du Lac Brome confirmed that its Saint-Claude site had been infected on Wednesday, but did not give details on its Knowlton site, quarantined “as a precaution”. The Quebec Poultry Disease Control Team (EQCMA) has drawn an “enhanced biosecurity zone in emergency situations” around Knowlton, recommending that the entire poultry industry avoid driving there.
The third outbreak of infection was detected in a small non-commercial farm, but such a case “in a small farm whose products are entirely consumed by the owner and his family on the breeding site, and [où] there is no contact with commercial farms, requires no control area,” EQCMA said in a statement.