New bird flu threat worries the world
2023.02.19 06:40
New bird flu threat worries the world
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – Herve Dupouy, a duck farmer in France, has culled his flock four times since 2015 to stop the spread of bird flu. However, as a new wave of deadly outbreaks approaches, he says it’s time to accept a solution that was once considered taboo: vaccination.
On his farm in Castelneu-Tursan, in the southwestern part of France, Dupouy stated, “The goal is that our animals do not fall ill and that they do not spread the virus.” As farmers, our job is not to collect dead animals.”
As with Dupouy, more and more governments around the world are rethinking their opposition to vaccines because keeping birds in cages or killing them hasn’t stopped the bird flu from spreading to commercial flocks and decimating them year after year.
In addition to vaccine manufacturers and poultry businesses, Reuters spoke with senior executives from the world’s largest egg and poultry producers. Despite the fact that the United States is the largest exporter of poultry meat, they all stated that there had been a significant shift in the global approach to vaccines due to the severity of this year’s bird flu outbreak.
In addition to the expense of killing millions of chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese, scientists and governments are increasingly concerned that the virus will mutate and spread to humans only if it becomes endemic.
Marc Fesneau, the minister of agriculture in France, stated, “That’s why every country in the world is worried about bird flu.”
“There is no reason to panic, but these lessons must be learned from history. “For this reason, we are researching global vaccinations,” he told Reuters.
The majority of the world’s largest poultry producers have resisted vaccinations due to fears that they could cover up the spread of the bird flu and hinder exports to nations that prohibit vaccinated poultry.
However, the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) told Reuters that bird flu, also known as avian influenza, has ravaged farms all over the world since the beginning of the year. This has resulted in the deaths of more than 200 million birds as a result of the disease or large-scale slaughter.
Egg prices skyrocketed as a result of last year’s mass slaughter, contributing to the global food crisis.
Mexico began emergency vaccinations last year, and Ecuador announced this month that it would immunize more than two million birds after a 9-year-old girl was infected with the virus.
According to France’s agriculture minister, Fesneau, vaccination of poultry is expected to begin in September, prior to the return of wild birds that migrate and can infect farms.
In contrast, the EU agreed to implement a vaccine strategy across its 27 member states last year.
Additionally, Brussels has normalized its poultry vaccination regulations, which are scheduled to take effect next month. A spokesperson for the European Commission told Reuters that they will ensure that poultry products and day-old chicks can be traded freely within the bloc.
China, which consumes the majority of its domestic poultry production, has been immunized against avian influenza for nearly 20 years and has successfully reduced outbreaks significantly.
However, the United States, which is the world’s largest poultry meat producer, is holding out for the time being.
According to WOAH data, France has suffered the most within the EU, while the United States has been hit hardest worldwide with a death toll of more than 58 million birds in the past year, followed by Canada.
However, countries reluctant to vaccinate poultry against the bird flu continue to prioritize the threat of trade restrictions.
Even though vaccines can lower the number of deaths, some vaccinated birds may still get the disease and spread it, effectively concealing the virus’s spread.
Because of this, major purchasers of live poultry and poultry meat have restricted imports from countries where vaccines are legal for fear of spreading the virus.
Additionally, bird flu can rapidly mutate, reducing the effectiveness of vaccines, making vaccination programs costly and time-consuming due to the necessity of administering shots one at a time. Additionally, flocks must be monitored even after vaccination.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), “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.”
Philippe Gelin, chief executive of France’s LDC (LOUP.PA), one of the largest poultry companies in Europe, stated that bilateral negotiations would be required to clear exports to those markets and prevent unfair competition due to trade restrictions on vaccined poultry.
According to French minister Fesneau, Paris was negotiating with its non-EU trade partners to allow the export of vaccinated poultry, and bilateral talks were also taking place at the EU level with nations outside the bloc.
MRNA POULTRY VACCINES Despite the fact that several of Brazil’s neighbors, including Bolivia, have reported outbreaks, the world’s largest poultry exporter has so far avoided an outbreak and the requirement for vaccines.
However, nations like France, which spent 1.2 billion euros ($1.1 billion) compensating poultry farmers for their losses the previous year, believe it is time to adopt vaccination.
Gilles Salvat, deputy director of the research division at the French health security agency ANSES, stated, “This is a huge economic loss.” We will not prevent the virus from occasionally entering the country through wildlife or a contaminated environment, but we do want to prevent these occasional introductions from spreading throughout the nation.”
France is testing vaccines for ducks as part of the EU-wide strategy. The ducks are very receptive to the virus and do not show symptoms for many days, increasing the risk of spreading to other farms.
The results of the EU trials, which are expected in the coming months, are being tested on egg-laying hens in the Netherlands, turkeys in Italy, and Pekin ducks in Hungary.
One of the main companies working on bird flu vaccines is France’s Ceva Animal Health, and Germany’s Boehringher Ingelheim said that the first results were “very promising,” especially because the virus was less excreted by infected birds.
Ceva claimed that it was the first company to use the mRNA technology found in some COVID shots in poultry vaccines.
According to Sylvain Comte, corporate marketing director for poultry at Ceva, the global market for bird flu vaccines would be between 800 million and 1 billion doses annually, excluding China.
The World Health Organization stated last week that nations must prepare for any shift in the status quo, despite the fact that the risk to humans from bird flu remains low and there have never been cases of human-to-human transmission.
The recent COVID outbreak has demonstrated the possibility of an animal-borne virus mutating or combining with another influenza virus to spread to humans and cause a global pandemic.
Several mammals, including minks in Spain, foxes and otters in Britain, a cat in France, and grizzly bears in the United States, have been killed by the H5N1 strain that was prevalent during the most recent bird flu outbreak.
Salvat of the French agency ANSES stated, “Without being alarmist, we should be careful and not let this virus circulate too intensively and for too long.”
