2023-12-28 14:49:21
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 8 hours ago, Updated 15 minutes ago
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Professionals fear “an unprecedented economic crisis” a few days before the New Year and ask “who will pay the bill”. Several cases of collective food poisoning have been reported, but are not serious at this stage.
A hard blow for the oyster farmers of the Arcachon Basin: a few days before the New Year, their oysters which usually adorn the New Year’s Eve tables were temporarily banned from sale after “several cases of collective food poisoning”. According to the Gironde prefecture, “the symptoms are those of acute gastroenteritis and no serious cases have been reported to date”. Traceability investigations are underway but several reports indicate that oysters from the Arcachon Basin “are in question”, analyzes having confirmed the presence of “norovirus”, responsible for gastroenteritis, in local parks.
The French Public Health agency noted in the region, around Christmas, “an increase in visits to emergency rooms for gastrointestinal symptoms linked to the same food origin”. “As of today, batches of shellfish harvested or fished in these areas must be withdrawn from sale. People who have shellfish from these areas are asked not to consume them and to return them to the point of sale,” indicates the prefectural press release.
This measure, which will be lifted “as soon as the health quality of the shellfish has become fully satisfactory again”, primarily affects oyster farmers who sell a large part of their production at the end of the year. “It’s a big blow (…) difficult to quantify, between 20 and 30% of turnover,” Martin Maïron, an oyster farmer in Arès, who must bring in oysters from Brittany, told AFP. to deliver to its customers on New Year’s Day. As for his, “the only thing to do is put everything back in the park (…) The oyster is a filter feeder, it will decontaminate itself with the renewal of water in the pond,” he said. added, referring to a deadline of 28 days.
Payer l’addition
Local production of oysters is around 8,000 tonnes per year, or 10% of national production – half of which comes from Marennes-Oléron (Charente-Maritime) -, according to figures from the Arcachon Aquitaine Regional Shellfish Culture Committee. (CRCAA) and Agreste (agricultural statistics). “For those who work with large retailers, the holiday period represents up to half of their volumes, with two-thirds sold at Christmas and a third for New Year,” explains Thierry Lafon, producer at Gujan Mestras.
“There is the immediate impact, the loss of income, and then the shock wave: the oysters which will not be sold will saturate the market,” he continues. It’s a living product, we can’t put them on a shelf and say we’ll see later, we’ll have to manage a bulky stock.” The CRCAA thus anticipates “an unprecedented economic crisis” and asks “who will pay the bill”. “We hope to be compensated for what we endure, with the sewer outlets puking everywhere. Everything pours into the pool and we end up with a norovirus,” laments Martin Maïron.
Mixture of waters
Producers say they are “victims of the saturation of wastewater and rainwater networks” after severe bad weather in the fall, which causes “overflows into the natural environment” contaminating the breeding areas. For Thierry Lafon, the problem has been known for a long time: “We have a very adequate sanitation network but the management of rainwater is lamentable.” “We had heavy rains for a month and a half, the water tables were level and a few centimeters of water on the road were enough to invade the sanitation system. The pipes no longer have the capacity to pass all this flow and it overflows,” explains the oyster farmer.
“At the end of the day, you can have mixtures of wastewater and rainwater flowing into the natural environment,” confirms a manager from the Syndicat intercommunal du bassin d’Arcachon, network manager. “We are working on the subject (…) to improve the protection of the territory against bad weather.” Currently, “we cannot cope” with such rain, says Xavier Daney, mayor of Arès. But for him, the episode “is multifactorial, it can’t only come from that.”
Also read: Prawns recalled due to potentially fatal flesh-eating bacteria
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