HEALTH: The 600,000 breeding ducks still alive in the Landes will be slaughtered to try to eradicate the Bird flu …
600,000 ducks being farmed in the Landes will be slaughtered to try to eradicate the bird flu outbreak, said on Tuesday by the Minister of Agriculture Stéphane Le Foll to France Bleu.
Les 600.000 canards encore vivants dans les Landes vont être abattus pour éradiquer la grippe aviaire https://t.co/JOjCHSKinO pic.twitter.com/8FIbBAlxIl
— France Bleu (@francebleu) February 21, 2017
“We’ll have to act fast”
“We have already slaughtered a lot of ducks in part of the department, we know that it remains an area where we will need to act fast to slaughter all the ducks to try to stabilize the area,” said Stephane Le Foll, after answering in the affirmative when asked if he would slaughter 600,000 ducks department.
The minister must go on Tuesday afternoon to Mont-de-Marsan, Landes prefecture. “There remains only the western part of the department that needs to be treated, unfortunately,” said Stephane Le Foll, who said “we will have to move fast in the slaughter of ducks so we can have a stabilizing period for the whole area, that’s the goal.” He then referred to the establishment of “protection zones in which we will avoid relocations of ducks and duck movements.”
Landes is the first national producer of foie gras
The Minister hopes to make “preventive action” (prevent the spread of the disease) and “then build a resumption of production, delays that will be in tune with the professionals but it will take several weeks.”
FDSEA Landes, local branch of the main farmers’ union FNSEA, had said last Thursday that they in favor of a total slaughter of ducks with crawlspace in the fight against avian flu, saying the measures taken so far were “in deadlock ” as shown by the increase in cases of H5N8 in the Southwest.
Landes is the first national producer of foie gras with a quarter of the French production.
