The bird flu epizootic is the “most devastating” that Europe has known in its entire history. This is what European health authorities estimated on Tuesday, with more than 50 million birds slaughtered in infected farms alone between 2021 and 2022. In France, from August 1 to December 21, 3.3 million animals have already been slaughtered, half of them ducks. Two million were killed in December alone, according to the French Ministry of Agriculture.
Confronted like the rest of Europe with this catastrophic epizootic of avian flu, the French government has set itself the objective of launching the first vaccination of poultry in the fall of 2023. Despite many obstacles, the Ministry of Agriculture presented on Thursday the main lines of an action plan to “avoid a new crisis” next fall.
A real logistical challenge, knowing that to date there is no sufficiently effective vaccine, with a marketing authorization, and even less European regulations authorizing vaccination. According to the schedule presented on Thursday, the first results of the laboratory experiments should be known around March 2023. “To date, they are rather encouraging, with a good response to the virus”, according to the ministry.
During the same period, the National Health Security Agency will be required to present different “relevant vaccination scenarios”. It may recommend, for example, to start with certain species, ducks and turkeys being the most fragile.
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The French State will then try to define its vaccination strategy, quantify its cost, and determine who will pay. “If all the signals are green, in May, we will have functional, authorized vaccines, and an appropriate health and economic strategy,” he summarizes.
226 sources of contamination in France
Herders, psychologically and financially strained, would struggle to endure a devastating third winter, as the virus is becoming endemic on the continent.
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The acceleration in the spread of the virus is linked not only to the drop in temperatures, but also to the “high migratory activity of wild birds”, the ministry said.
A total of 226 outbreaks have been recorded in French farms since August 1. The epidemic continues in particular to ravage those located in Vendée (94 outbreaks), in Maine-et-Loire (38 outbreaks) and Deux-Sèvres (33 outbreaks). The previous wave in France, between the end of November 2021 and mid-May 2022, had led to the euthanasia of more than 20 million poultry.
But France cannot act alone, and its plan depends on authorizations at European and international levels. European regulations authorizing the principle of vaccination “should come into force at the end of February”, whereas only a year ago, “professionals and stakeholders were directly opposed to it”.
Selling vaccinated chickens and birds, the other challenge
There remains, however, the risk that some importing countries refuse to buy poultry or products from vaccinated birds, fearing that the vaccine “masks” the presence of the disease and that the virus then spreads among them “low noise”. France will therefore have to conduct bilateral negotiations with its trading partners to get them to agree to import vaccinated chickens. A halt in French poultry exports would represent a loss of 500 million euros for the sector.
Five vaccines are now available worldwide, and only one has a marketing authorization in Europe for chickens, according to ANSES. However, it dates from 2006, “and the vaccine strain (…) has not been updated since”.
Five European countries have embarked on the race for the vaccine, and most of the results of the experiments should be known in the first quarter of 2023. Two French laboratories including Ceva are working on a vaccine for ducks, while the Netherlands are working on a vaccine for chickens, and Italy for turkeys.
“If we wait until May to start production, we will not be able to vaccinate in the fall”, notes however the ministry, which will therefore approach “the companies concerned to see how to anticipate the deadline”.