The level of vigilance around avian flu is going up a notch across the country. Breeders will therefore have to confine their poultry. The main production regions, Brittany and Pays-de-la-Loire, but also the department of Deux-Sèvres, had already been subject to this obligation since mid-October.
But the epizootic has continued to spread in recent days: an outbreak was notably discovered in the Gard last week, in a family barnyard in the town of Fourques, near Arles. A few weeks earlier, another outbreak had been detected in the Dordogne, the first in the south-west of the country.
21 million poultry slaughtered in 2021-2022
After a catastrophic 2021-2022 season (more than 21 million poultry slaughtered between the end of November and mid-May), the virus started to hit French farms again from the end of July, exceptionally early.
Health authorities had already raised the level of risk from “negligible” to “moderate” across the country in early October. Even before the resumption of the epizootic this summer, the bill for avian flu amounted to more than a billion euros for the State devoted to compensation for losses of professionals. Since August 1, 18 European countries have spotted the virus on their territory.