foie gras endangered? horribly upseting news!

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Foie Gras Endangered Due to Bird Flu Fears

 

By ELAINE GANLEY (Associated Press Writer)

From Associated PressMarch 07, 2006 9:42 PM EST

 

HORSARRIEU, France - Wings flap, feathers fly and, in a flash, the needle sinks into the fleshy snow-white neck of another of Benoit Descorps' 35,000 ducks.

The jabs aim to protect the French farmer's flock from the lethal strain of bird flu. But no inoculation can shield Europe's poultry industry from consumer fears that have sent sales plummeting for such beloved French specialities as foie gras, duck a l'orange and roast chicken.

Jitters threaten the entire industry, from breeders to distributors, feed producers to feather processors. Despite Europe's success so far in limiting the spread of H5N1 and authorities' assurances that well-cooked poultry presents no risk, many consumers are avoiding it.

"What will we live on?" Descorps fretted. "It's not just the farmers ... Lots of things are linked."

Poultry sales have plummeted by a third in France, the 25-nation European Union's lead producer and the only member where H5N1 has stricken a commercial farm. The outbreak, on a turkey farm in the southeast Ain region, was quickly contained by slaughtering the 11,000 birds and quarantining neighboring farms. Still, 45 non-EU nations have suspended French imports, including Japan, which consumes 10 percent of French foie gras exports.

Some duck breeders in the region recall the crisis of confidence a decade ago over mad cow disease that pushed beef prices down some 30 percent.

"They made a big to-do over beef," said Eric Degert, a breeder in Clermont, just outside the high-risk zone. "Now, they don't talk about it anymore."

Even in countries with no embargoes, orders of French poultry are down 50 percent, France's Agriculture Ministry says. The French Poultry Confederation calculates the industry in France alone is losing $48 million per month.

In Italy, where H5N1 has not been found outside wild birds, sales are down an estimated 70 percent. The Italian Senate passed a bill late Tuesday allowing a $120 million assistance fund for to the poultry industry; the lower house is expected to vote Wednesday.

Fears are not limited to urbanites, who shop in supermarkets and rarely thought about country life before the corpses of wild ducks, swans and other flu-stricken birds were fished from lakes and whisked to laboratories for testing.

Cockfighting has been banned. And even in areas where poultry farming is an integral part of life - including here in the foie gras-producing Landes region of southwest France - some eye the skies with suspicion. They wonder whether birds migrating from Africa will carry the virus on their journey north.

"Living in this ambient fear, you end up being afraid," said Landes veterinarian Jean-Marc Huguet, who has joined the region's campaign to vaccinate 700,000 ducks. They will get the needle twice in coming months.

Hundreds of miles separate Landes, which stretches inland from the Atlantic coast, from the Ain and Camargues regions on the Mediterranean, where H5N1 showed up in the wild last week. But like those areas, Landes is dotted with small bodies of water that attract migrating birds, putting it at risk.

Migrating birds are considered a key vector in H5N1's westward march from Asia. Experts fear the virus, which for the moment does not readily pass from animals to humans, will mutate into a form that spreads easily between people, sparking a deadly flu pandemic.

Consumer fears are such that the Landes bishop, Monsignor Philippe Breton, told his congregation last weekend to "keep their heads" and eat poultry in solidarity with the industry. He dispensed the faithful from giving up poultry during Lenten fast days preceding Easter, when Roman Catholics are asked not to eat meat.

In Paris, President Jacques Chirac and his ministers have made shows of eating chicken. Chirac served the chicken dish supreme de volaille when Poland's president visited last month.

Huguet, the veterinarian, said that even the Landes' vaccination campaign is causing misgivings because people confuse the shots with a bird flu treatment. In the public mind, he said, "bird flu vaccinations equal coffins in the town."

Still, the region's breeders say the alternative - keeping flocks indoors - is unworkable because their free-range birds need to roam outdoors.

Veterinary teams are racing from farm to farm. They use a vaccine against the H5N2 strain of bird flu, rather than H5N1, so laboratories can differentiate between vaccinated and infected ducks if there is an outbreak. Huguet said the vaccine will protect against the deadly H5N1 strain.

Non-vaccinated "sentry" ducks - 50 to a flock of 500 to 3,000 - serve as a control group to flag a contamination.

In one vaccination, ducks cornered in a pen were gathered up a half-dozen at a time by a handler. He held them chest high for the injection by a technician. The snow-white mulards took their shots with a flurry of feathers and a quack.

Local officials deny ducks were selected for vaccination simply to protect luxury products like foie gras - the most important poultry product in the Landes region, accounting for 22 percent of French production. Foie gras exports are valued at $110 million a year.

Not everyone is in crisis mode.

"We aren't developing a psychosis here," said Degert, the foie gras producer in Clermont, as he slid a bronze tube down the throat of one of his ducks and forced-fed it cooked, greased corn. "If you get scared, you're finished."

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Paul Duke in Paris contributed to this report.

 

 

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

 

-Mother Teresa