Ducks in peril


When the French ANSES national reference laboratory confirmed on 8 December 2020 that a farm of 6,000 ducks in the municipality of Be- nesse-Maremne (Landes region) was infected with the H5N8 virus, foie gras producers hoped that their flocks would not be as hard hit as in 2017. However, hopes faded quickly and duck flocks, like these Muscovy ducks, were in peril. After implementing extra monitoring in early December, the virus was found in many flocks in the south west of France, culminating in the culling of many dozens of flocks in the


first few weeks of 2021. “The virus is stronger than us. New clusters are constantly emerging,” the head of France’s CIFOQ federation of foie gras producers, Marie-Pierre Pe, told Agence France-Presse. The head of France’s chamber of agriculture, Sebastien Windsor, called for “radical measures” to try to restore confidence in export markets such as China which announced this week that it was suspending French poultry imports over the virus. Similar measures during the 2016/2017 out- break resulted in the culling of 25 million ducks and geese.


▶ POULTRY WORLD | No. 1, 2021 PHOTO: ANP 23


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