France to jab one million cattle as cull protests grow
France plans to inoculate 1 million head of cattle against lumpy skin disease over the coming weeks, Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Annie Genevard said, as farmers barricaded highways and tipped manure outside public buildings to protest herd culls over the weekend.
Following several outbreaks of the highly contagious disease, authorities had mandated large-scale culls, which triggered protests by farmers who viewed the measure as disproportionate.
The state's plan to stamp out what it describes as a highly contagious disease has been to cull all animals in affected herds and carry out "emergency vaccination" of all cattle within a 50 kilometer radius, reported Agence France-Presse.
According to official data, France has logged 110 outbreaks in nine departments and slaughtered roughly 3,000 animals.
Since the first case was reported on June 29, nearly 6 million euros ($7 million) has been paid out to farmers, said the ministry.
"We will vaccinate nearly one million animals in the coming weeks and protect farmers," Genevard told radio network ICI on Saturday. "I want to reiterate that the state will stand by affected farmers, their losses will be compensated as well as their operating losses."
A new outbreak has been reported in the Haute-Garonne administrative department in the Occitanie region of southwestern France, which borders Spain, Genevard confirmed.
Lumpy skin disease is a virus transmitted by insects that afflicts cattle and buffalo, leading to blisters and reducing milk production. Though harmless to humans, it often leads to trade restrictions and heavy economic losses.
France's agriculture ministry, backed by the main farming union, National Federation of Agricultural Holders' Unions, or FNSEA, maintains that wholesale culling of infected herds, together with vaccination and movement curbs, is required to curb the disease and enable cattle exports.
If the disease keeps spreading in livestock farms, it could claim "at the very least, 1.5 million cattle", Genevard told French newspaper Le Parisien in an earlier interview.
Local authorities said farmers had escalated protests on Saturday, obstructing sections of the A64 highway in the southwestern department of Hautes-Pyrenees.
Demonstrators also tipped manure outside government buildings in Tarbes, the department's administrative capital, hampering the work of officials overseeing the vaccination campaign.
Several unions have labeled the government's approach as ineffective, with the left wing Confederation Paysanne, or Farmers' Confederation, saying on Friday the strategy was "more scary than the illness itself" and urged an end to culls alongside expanded vaccination. It called for "blockades across France to put an end to this madness".
The Coordination Rurale, or CR, union also rejects the systematic culling strategy, urging targeted measures and quarantine protocols instead.
"There is no question of culling animals in the Pyrenees that are not sick and are healthy, simply because they belong to a herd from which a supposedly sick animal came," said Leon Thierry, co-president of CR in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques department, in the southwest of France.
Genevard added that inoculation will be compulsory, and in some instances whole herd culls will still be required because the disease can be symptomless and evade detection.
French farmers are also planning a tractor protest in Brussels, Belgium on Thursday, where the European Union will weigh up authorizing the free trade agreement with the South American trade bloc, Mercosur.
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