by Sybille de La Hamaide

CASTELNAU-TURSAN, Landes (Reuters) – Hervé Dupouy, a duck farmer in the Landes, has had his ducks slaughtered four times since 2015 to prevent the spread of bird flu. Faced with a new murderous wave this year, he says to himself that it is time to resign himself to a solution that has long remained taboo: vaccination.

“The goal is that both our animals do not get sick and then that they do not spread the virus in the environment and suddenly that it does not contaminate the farms which are close to my farm”, he explains, adding: “I am not a breeder to recover dead animals.”

More and more governments around the world are backtracking on their opposition to the vaccine because culling or confining poultry is no longer enough to stem the waves of avian flu which, year after year, are decimating poultry flocks.

Since the start of last year, bird flu, or avian influenza, has led to the culling of more than 200 million birds, according to the World Organization for Animal Health (WHO). These slaughters have in particular caused the price of eggs to soar, contributing to the world food crisis.

Beyond the cost represented by the death of millions of chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese, the scientific community and the States are worried about a virus, which if it became endemic, could mutate more and be transmitted to the male.

“This is why in all countries of the world there is concern about avian influenza,” French Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau told Reuters.

“There is no reason to panic but we must be edified by what has happened in history on these subjects. That is why at the world level we are concerned about vaccination .”

Mexico launched emergency vaccinations last year and Ecuador this month announced plans to inoculate more than two million birds with the vaccine after the virus infected a 9-year-old girl.

BILATERAL NEGOTIATIONS

France intends to start vaccinating as early as September, said Marc Fesneau, hoping that a vaccination strategy on which birds to vaccinate, in which region, with which vaccine, can have been defined and that the vaccines are ready.

“It’s a race against time,” he added.

At European Union level, an agreement was reached in 2022 to implement a common vaccination strategy within the Twenty-Seven.

Brussels has also harmonized its rules, which are due to take effect next month and ensure unhindered trade in poultry products and chicks within the EU bloc, a European Commission spokesperson said.

China, which consumes most of its poultry production, has been vaccinating against bird flu for nearly two decades and has managed to drastically reduce the number of outbreaks of the virus.

But the world’s largest producer of poultry meat, the United States, continues to display its skepticism.

The country was the most affected by the last epidemic, with more than 58 million poultry slaughtered during the past year, ahead of Canada, while France, with more than around 20 million, was the most EU affected, OMSA data show.

The fear of trade restrictions remains at the heart of Washington’s concerns.

While vaccines help reduce the mortality rate, some vaccinated birds can still contract the virus and pass it on, masking its spread.

It is for this reason that some large buyers of poultry meat or live birds prohibit imports from countries where vaccination is authorized, fearing that they will also import the virus.

The avian influenza virus is also capable of mutating rapidly, which reduces the effectiveness of vaccines, while vaccination campaigns are costly and time-consuming, injections often having to be administered one by one to each animal. And once vaccinated, poultry should continue to be monitored.

“The use of a vaccine at this time would have negative consequences for the poultry trade while continuing to require responses such as quarantine, depopulation and surveillance testing,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. at Reuters.

Faced with the restrictions imposed on the trade in vaccinated poultry, bilateral negotiations are necessary to authorize exports to these markets and avoid distortions of competition, insists Philippe Gélin, general manager of French LDC, one of the European leaders in poultry. .

According to Marc Fesneau, Paris is negotiating with its partners outside the EU to authorize the export of vaccinated poultry. Discussions are also under way at EU level with third countries.

“AVOID MASSIVE DISTRIBUTION”

Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of poultry, has so far escaped the epidemic but the virus is present in several neighboring countries, such as Bolivia.

For France, which spent 1.1 billion euros last year to compensate farms, the time has come to move on to vaccination.

“These are huge economic losses,” notes Gilles Salvat, Deputy Director General of ANSES, the National Food Safety Agency.

“We will not avoid occasional introductions via wildlife or via a contaminated environment. On the other hand, what we want to avoid is that these occasional introductions do not become massive diffusions over the whole of a territory” , he said.

As part of the European strategy, France is undertaking vaccination tests on ducks, which are very sensitive to contamination by the virus and can remain asymptomatic for several days, which increases the risk of transmission to other farms.

The Netherlands is testing vaccines on laying hens, Italy on turkeys and Hungary on Peking ducks. Results are expected in the coming months.

Ceva Santé Animale, a French veterinary pharmaceutical group, which is one of the main groups, with the German Boehringer, to develop vaccines against avian flu, considers the first results “very promising”, in particular because they show a reduction significant shedding of the virus by infected animals.

Ceva specifies that it is using messenger RNA technology for the first time, the same one that is used for certain vaccines against COVID-19.

The global market for avian flu vaccines would represent 800 million to one billion doses per year, excluding China, estimates Sylvain Comte, poultry marketing director at Ceva.

Even though the risk of transmission to humans remains low, and there has never been a proven case of human-to-human transmission, countries must prepare for any changes, the World Health Organization has warned. (WHO) last week.

The H5N1 virus strain, prevalent in the latest outbreak, has killed several mammals this season, including mink in Spain, foxes and otters in Britain, a cat in France and bears in the United States.

“Without being alarmist, we should be attentive and not let this virus circulate too intensely and for too long”, assures Gilles Salvat.

(Report Sybille de La Hamaide and Stéphane Mahé in France, Cassandra Garrison in Mexico City, Tom Polansek in Chicago, Ana Mano in Sao Paulo, Phil Blenkisop in Brussels, Michael Hogan in Hamburg, Nigel Hunt in London, Sarah El Safty in Cairo and Dominique Patton in Beijing; Jean-Stéphane Brosse, edited by Blandine Hénault)

Copyright © 2023 Thomson Reuters