Two months before the end-of-year celebrations, avian flu and the energy crisis will cause foie gras prices to rise. Breeders speak of a “catastrophic year“. With an epidemic of bird flu “who never stopped“, tells on franceinfo Saturday October 22 Sylvie Colas, poultry farmer in the Gers.
>> Avian flu: falling production and rising prices, foie gras producers are worried as the holidays approach
“The wave never stopped, probably due to a certain endemization of the virus“, notes the farmer in charge of the “avian flu” file at the Confédération paysanne. “Already because last year, especially in the Great West, in May, there were a lot of outbreaks, a lot of slaughter“, she specifies.
The very large concentration of animals has complicated the task of health authorities and breeders, according to Sylvie Colas: “From the moment there are a lot of animals, a lot of traffic, equipment, personnel, very large slaughterhouses, but also a lot of manure and slurry around these farms… All this probably caused a big viral load which also affected the local fauna.“
For the breeder, the virus has never been eradicated, since it has “always found something to eat.“Sylvie Colas is of the same opinion as certain agricultural specialists who consider this avian flu crisis to be the worst that France has known.
“It’s one crisis too many. We think that between 20% and 30% of our producers, whether small, medium or large, will abandon the profession.”
Sylvie Colas, poultry farmeron franceinfo
“We feel that there is very little hope in this poultry sector“, she also adds. The spokesperson for the Confédération paysanne union presents a bitter observation since that “even with all the measures that had been taken, and in particular that of confinement that we had been told was the solution, it did not work“The Hungarian and Bulgarian competitors are also affected by the epizootic.