Outbreak of avian flu in France is 'cause for concern'

The French agriculture ministry has raised the country's risk level for avian flu from moderate to high after new cases of the highly contagious virus were detected.

The "high" risk level implies that all poultry should be kept inside on farms and additional security measures taken to avoid a spread of the disease.

Outbreaks have already been reported in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and the first case was confirmed on a farm in Brittany, in the northwest of France last week.

The virus, which strikes the digestive and respiratory organs of birds, tends to spread in fall and winter, and in the Belgian town of Diksmuide, close to the border with France, a recent outbreak killed 95 poultry birds and caused the rest of the flock of 20,100 to be slaughtered.

Europe's worst ever outbreak of the virus occurred in 2022, when 50 million birds were killed or culled across 37 countries.

In September, the United States banned poultry imports from France after the country decided to vaccinate ducks against the virus, which is easily transmitted without visible symptoms.

Between 2022 and spring of this year, an outbreak in the US saw 59 million birds culled in 47 states, with the USA Today newspaper reporting the outbreak had cost farmers around $3 billion.

The virus can be transmitted from animals to humans, either through direct contact with a contaminated environment or via another animal as an intermediate host, but there is no suggestion it can be transmitted between humans.

Symptoms in humans include muscle aches, temperature, shortness of breath, and conjunctivitis.

Earlier this year, Paul Digard, professor of virology at The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh, told the Politico website that the virus's "shape-shifting abilities" were a major cause for concern.

"It's one of the fastest evolving things on the planet," he explained, adding that the big fear was that if a person or an animal was infected with both avian flu and human flu, a new hybrid subtype might emerge, "and that could be the start of a pandemic".