French duck farmer Herve Dupouy has culled his flock four times since 2015 to stop the spread of bird flu but as a wave of deadly outbreaks nears his farm once again, he says it's time to accept a solution once considered taboo: vaccination.
France is on track to start vaccinating poultry in September, agriculture minister Fesneau told Reuters, before the return of migrating wild birds that can infect farms.Brussels has also normalised its poultry vaccination rules, which are due to come into force next month. They will ensure poultry products and day-old chicks can be traded freely within the bloc, a European Commission spokesperson told Reuters.
While vaccines can reduce death rates, some vaccinated birds could still contract the disease and transmit it, effectively masking the spread of the virus. "The use of a vaccine at this time would have detrimental impacts on poultry trade while still necessitating response activities such as quarantine, depopulation, and surveillance testing," the U.S. Department of Agriculture told Reuters.
"This is a huge economic loss," said Gilles Salvat, deputy director of the research division at French health security agency ANSES. "We won't avoid occasional introductions via wildlife or via a contaminated environment, but what we want to avoid is these occasional introductions spreading throughout the country."
France's Ceva Animal Health, one of the main companies developing bird flu vaccines along with Germany's Boehringher Ingelheim, said initial results were "very promising", notably by sharply reducing the excretion of the virus by infected birds. Although the risk to humans from bird flu remains low, and there have never been cases of human-to-human transmission, countries must prepare for any change in the status quo, the World Health OrganizationThe recent COVID crisis has shown the risk of a virus found in animals mutating or combining with another influenza virus to make the jump to humans - and lead to a global pandemic.
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