Bird flu epidemic: thousands of birds are slaughtered …

A bird flu epidemic worries the French authorities, who has slaughtered more than 200,000 ducks on farms across the country and plans to do so with 400,000 more ducks. Something similar happens in India, which also ordered the slaughter of tens of thousands of poultry to contain the epidemic that has already spread to several states.

As reported on Tuesday by the head of veterinary services of the French Ministry of Agriculture, Loïc Evain, the measure has already reached more than 100,000 ducks in sources of contamination already identified 104,000 as a preventive measure in neighboring farms.

“There are still around 400,000 people to be sacrificed preventively” within a radius of one kilometer around an identified epidemic, said the official. And he explained: “we are facing a exceptional episode with a highly contagious virusWhich “affects open air farms, but not only” them.

“If the spread of the virus continues”, he warned, “even more drastic measures will have to be taken”. Until January 1, they had been identified in France 61 bird flu outbreaks, including 48 in the Landes in the southwest, where many geese and duck farms are used for production of “foie gras”.

The General Confederation of Aviculture (CFA), affiliated to the FNSEA agricultural union, issued a statement on Tuesday in which it deemed “urgent that the State strengthen its means of action on the ground, in collaboration with the industry, to act as closely and as quickly as possible “to contain the H5N8 virus.

The agricultural unions Confédération paysanne y Modef, por su parte, denounced the preventive slaughter of healthy animals, considering it “as ineffective from a health point of view as morally unacceptable”.

The bird flu epidemic is also affecting India, where authorities ordered the slaughter of tens of thousands of poultry. At least six states have stepped up efforts to contain the two circulating strains of avian flu, the H5N1 and H5N8 viruses, which threaten both poultry and wild birds.

Last week, officials from the state of northern Himachal Pradesh reported that thousands of bird carcasses were found around a Himalayan lake. “At Lake Pong, the results indicate that 2,400 migratory birds died last week and 600 more died on MondaySaid Archana Sharma, head of the state’s nature reserves.

After submitting samples for analysis to the National Institute of High Security Veterinary Epidemiology (NIHSAD), it was confirmed that the birds had contracted H5NI bird flu. Most of the wildlife affected by the disease were geese from the high mountains of Central Asia, which migrate by the thousands to South Asia each winter.

During, local authorities have banned the sale and export of poultry in the area and they have stepped up checks to try to contain the spread of these viruses.