Herve Dupouy, a French duck farmer, has had to cull his flock four times since 2015 to stop the spread of bird flu, but now that the farm is once more on the path of a devastating outbreak, he says it’s time to accept a remedy that was formerly frowned upon: vaccination, as reported by NBC.
Banned vaccinations
“The goal is that our animals don’t fall ill and that they don’t spread the virus,” Dupouy said on his farm in Castelneu-Tursan in southwestern France.
“Our job as farmers is not to gather dead animals.”
They all said there had been a marked shift in the approach to vaccines globally due to the severity of this year’s bird flu outbreak, though the biggest exporter of poultry meat, the United States, told Reuters it remains reluctant.
“That’s why every country in the world is worried about bird flu,” French agriculture minister Marc Fesneau said.
“There’s no reason to panic but we must learn from history on these subjects.”
Most of the world’s biggest poultry producers have resisted vaccinations due to concerns they could mask the spread of bird flu and hit exports to countries that have banned vaccinated poultry on fears infected birds could slip through the net.
Global food crisis
But since early last year, bird flu, or avian influenza, has ravaged farms around the world, leading to the deaths of more than 200 million birds because of the disease or mass culls, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) told Reuters.
The mass culls last year also sent the price of eggs skyrocketing, contributing to the global food crisis.
France is on track to start vaccinating poultry in September, agriculture minister Fesneau told Reuters, before the return of migrating wild birds that can infect farms.
The E.U., meanwhile, agreed last year to implement a vaccine strategy across its 27 member states.
But the biggest producer of poultry meat in the world, the United States, is holding out for now.
Efficacy of vaccines
But the fear of trade restrictions remains a centre stage for countries reluctant to vaccinate poultry against bird flu.
Bird flu can also mutate rapidly and reduce the efficacy of vaccines while programmes are costly and time-consuming, as shots often need to be administered individually.
And even once birds have been vaccinated, flocks need to be monitored.
French minister Fesneau told Reuters that Paris was negotiating with its non-E.U. trade partners to allow exports of vaccinated poultry while there were also bilateral talks at the E.U. level with countries outside the bloc.
Brazil, the world’s largest poultry exporter, has so far avoided an outbreak — and the need for vaccines — though the virus is getting closer with several of its neighbours including Bolivia reporting outbreaks.
Poultry vaccines
But countries such as France, which spent 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) last year compensating poultry farmers for their losses, believe it’s time to bite the vaccination bullet.
“This is a huge economic loss,” said Gilles Salvat, deputy director of the research division at the French health security agency ANSES.
“We won’t avoid occasional introductions (of the virus) via wildlife or via a contaminated environment, but what we want to avoid is these occasional introductions spreading throughout the country.”
As part of the E.U.-wide strategy, France is carrying out tests on vaccines for ducks, which are very receptive to the virus and remain asymptomatic for many days, increasing the risk of transmission to other farms.
Ceva said it was using the mRNA technology used in some COVID shots for the first time in poultry vaccines.
Bird flu outbreak
The global market for bird flu vaccines would be about 800 million to 1 billion doses per year, excluding China, said Sylvain Comte, corporate marketing director for poultry at Ceva.
Although the risk to humans from bird flu remains low, and there have never been cases of human-to-human transmission, countries must prepare for any change in the status quo, the World Health Organization said last week.
The recent COVID crisis has shown the risk of a virus found in animals mutating or combining with another influenza virus to make the jump to humans — and lead to a global pandemic.
The H5N1 strain prevalent in the latest bird flu outbreak has killed several mammals, including minks in Spain, foxes and otters in Britain, a cat in France and grizzly bears in the United States.
“Without being alarmist, we should be careful and not let this virus circulate too intensively and for too long,” said Salvat at the French agency ANSES.
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Source: NBC
