It has now been two months since bluetongue decimated herds in the Pyrénées-Orientales. At the beginning of August, nearly a hundred farms were affected, with significant mortality among sheep. “Since the beginning of the crisis, I have lost 180 ewes out of a flock of 600,” laments Antoine Chrysostome, a farmer in Corsavy (Pyrénées-Orientales) and president of the department’s sheep union.
It has now been established with certainty that it is serotype 8, in its Aveyron variant, which is circulating in livestock, but also in wildlife. “There are several things that show the particular virulence of the virus, which had caused much less damage in Aveyron last August and September,” explains Paul Delbosc, director of the Pyrénées-Orientales health defense group. “The first is that we have cases in goat herds, which did not happen during the last episode. The second is the mortality in sheep: it is 30% of herds on average, which is very high. And the lethality, the number of dead animals compared to the number of sick animals, is also very high.”
65 sheep farms
What also surprises the livestock world is the altitude to which the culicoides midge that carries the disease seems to have had access this year. “Normally, it does not survive above 1,400 or 1,500 m, but here we have herds that have been contaminated in summer pastures, well above,” notes Thomas Sundermann, head of the health, animal protection and environment department of the departmental population directorate.
In total, 5 goat farms, 65 sheep farms and 26 cattle farms have reported an outbreak. But other species of ruminants, camelids, llamas, etc. Only two areas of the department are little affected for the moment, the Roussillon plain and the Albères massif. But the disease has already spread to neighboring departments, in Ariège and Aude and as far as Haute-Garonne. And this week we also discovered a first case of epizootic hemorrhagic disease in the Pyrénées-Orientales, a disease transmitted by this same midge, also host to equine fever and West Nile virus.
“A scale never seen before”
What will happen now? Vaccination campaigns, which are at the discretion of breeders and their veterinarians, should start to produce their effects. Animals acquire immunity after about forty days. “In theory, we vaccinate when the disease is not present, if there is a risk, but this time it happened so quickly that we had to act urgently,” says Paul Delbosc. “A crisis of this magnitude had never been seen and above all could not have been predicted,” adds Thomas Sundermann.
No one knows how the midge reached Vallespir, where the epizootic broke out. And no one knows the nature of the aid measures that will be put in place for affected farmers. “We don’t have many sheep in this department, 13,000, that could seriously affect our sector,” regrets the president of the sheep union. It will take several years to hope for a return to normal.
