With around 50 million poultry slaughtered in farms infected with the virus, Europe has been experiencing for more than a year the "most devastating" avian flu epizootic ever observed on its soil, European health authorities said on Tuesday. .
The unprecedented increase in the number of outbreaks in poultry this year could be linked to the spread of the virus through waterfowl.
Between October 2021 and September 2022, 37 European countries were affected by avian flu.
A total of 2,520 outbreaks in poultry, 227 outbreaks in captive birds and 3,867 detections in wild birds have been notified and around 50 million birds have been culled on affected farms, according to a report by the European Authority. (EFSA), the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Union Reference Laboratory.
In France a particularly tense situation
French farms are no exception to their European neighbours.
The risk was reassessed at a "high" level throughout mainland France in early November, which forced many breeders to confine their poultry to limit any spread of the disease.
This even prompted the state to initiate a drop in poultry production in the West, with early departures from the slaughterhouse, to prevent avian flu from getting out of control.
The virus started to hit French farms again in the summer, exceptionally early after a catastrophic 2021-2022 season.
More than 20 million poultry were slaughtered between the fall of 2021 and the spring of 2022. This episode, unprecedented in its scale, has upset the poultry world.
