The vaccination campaign for cattle against lumpy skin disease (LSD) will take a "major acceleration" in the Southwest thanks to the "general mobilization" of veterinarians, authorities promised on Wednesday, without convincing protesting farmers.
The government has announced a target of vaccinating 750,000 cattle in ten departments in the southwest quarter of the country over the next few weeks.
"If we want to reach the beginning of February with the start of herd immunity, we need to act quickly," said Jean-Marie Girier, prefect of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, in a farm in the Béarn village of Riupeyrous where this expanded vaccination campaign started Wednesday afternoon.
"It's a race against time. A general mobilization of veterinarians," said the state representative, promising "reinforcements of retired veterinarians, students and military veterinarians" to allow for "the major acceleration" announced by the government.
In this department, the 205,000 doses needed to vaccinate the entire cattle herd will be received "by Friday", state services have assured.
But these logistical promises are struggling to convince farmers who are protesting against the strategy – maintained – of systematically slaughtering herds as soon as a case of CND is detected.
"If France had the necessary doses, in this case around ten million doses to vaccinate the entire national herd, we would not be having to slaughter entire herds," said Stéphane Pelletier, vice-president of the Rural Coordination (CR) in Vienne, on Ici Poitou radio.
For Olivier de Ginestet, a member of the CR of Landes who was present on Wednesday morning at a roundabout occupied for several days by farmers in Mont-de-Marsan, "vaccination is the only umbrella that protects, it allows us to live with the virus."
"The systematic slaughter of animals is a total illusion, it doesn't work. We saw that clearly with ducks, we slaughtered ducks and the virus (avian flu, editor's note) is still there," says this poultry farmer.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, a stock of 500,000 vaccines is being shipped to the Southwest and an order of 400,000 doses, placed last week with the Netherlands, will be delivered soon.
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