French dairy and livestock farmers face multiple disease threats
Bluetongue serotype 3, Bluetongue serotype 4 and 8, Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) and recently even some cases of anthrax – French cattle farmers are dealing with a multitude of diseases, causing a loss of productivity and fertility as well as the death of their animals. The government has been helping, be it only for some of the diseases that have hit French farmers up and down the country. The farmers’ union is demanding more support and warns of another hot autumn.
BTV-8 re-emerged in France almost 10 years ago and has since then become endemic, with many hundreds of infections. Last summer, a new strain was identified in cattle and sheep in the Montpellier region. In December last year, French authorities reported 1,300 detections of this new BTV-8 strain. They added that the existing vaccine for BTV-8 is still effective against this new strain.
Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD)
In September last year, the first cases of EHD were reported in the very south-west of the country, near the border with Spain where the disease is constantly moving further north. After a quiet winter and spring, the number of EHD cases in France increased rapidly this summer, with 344 new cases reported between 1 June and 29 August, bringing the total to well over 4,500. Most infected farms are still in the south-west, but there is now also an increasing number of cases further up the west coast in the Loire-Atlantique region around Nantes.
Bluetongue
In August, France also reported the first cases of Bluetongue 3 following the explosion of that serotype in the Netherlands and Belgium where many thousands of farms had been affected. In France, too, Bluetongue 3 spreads rapidly, with over 340 new cases in the first week after the disease entered the country. The department of agriculture immediately started a massive vaccination campaign, with free vaccines provided to farms in a large protection zone. Of the 6.4 million doses ordered, 5.3 million were for cattle and 1.1 million for sheep.
Anthrax
The Cantal region, famous for a cheese bearing that name, reported yet another cattle disease: anthrax. According to reports from the regional authority or prefect, a number of cases have been reported at farms where some cattle were found dead. Anthrax is caused by a bacteria with spores that can remain in the ground for many years. The prefecture prohibited access to a number of fields that could be contaminated. The authorities admit that transmission of anthrax from cattle to humans is a possibility but only happens very rarely.
Impact on dairy production
All these diseases and problems haven’t appeared to have had much of an effect on the production of dairy yet. In May, production of cow milk came in at 2.08 billion, which was still 0.3% more year-over-year. April showed an even smaller increase of 0.1% at 2.05 billion litres. Thanks to higher figures earlier in the year, France produced almost 10.15 billion litres of milk in the first 5 months of this year, 1.1% more than in the same period in 2023.
Challenges in the livestock sector
Apart from all those diseases affecting cattle, other livestock farmers in France have their own problems. Despite the fact that poultry holders have just vaccinated their ducks and chicken against highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), with over 64 million doses of the vaccines provided free by the state, in August, some new cases of HPAI were discovered in Brittany. For pig holders, there is the constant threat of African Swine Fever with an increasing number of cases in both Western Germany and Northern Italy at a stone’s throw of the borders with France.
The French farmers union is warning about another hot autumn. “The situation is extremely tense. We don’t rule out that the anger among farmers that we’ve seen in the beginning of this year will resurface in the last few months,” chairman Arnaud Rousseau of the largest farmers organisation FNSEA said, adding, “Farmers urgently need help to reach the end of the month and start the new farming cycle, buying feed or seed.”
Smaller unions like the Confédération paysanne lack the ‘absence of any assistance to livestock farmers who have been hit by Bluetongue 8 or EHD’.
“The state offers free vaccines to all farmers hit by Bluetongue 3, but only in certain zones. We demand free vaccines everywhere in the country for all diseases that hit our cattle, as well as urgent financial assistance for any losses farmers suffer. It’s a race against the clock for many of our dairy and cattle farmers,” the CP says.
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