How beloved is foie gras in France? Enough that the country is planning to vaccinate 64 million ducks to protect the delicacy. The New York Times reports the effort kicked off Monday in a bid to safeguard the birds from Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, or HPAI. Reuters reports ducks are most vulnerable to the disease, which has forced a cull of some 30 million birds in France in the past three years and led farmers to dial down the density of the birds on their farms. That led to a 35% dent in the production of foie gras last year. Farms that currently house more than 250 ducks will have to vaccinate their birds—twice, it turns out.
In what France's foie gras federation describes as "a real technical and financial challenge," chicks will get their first dose 10 days after hatching and the second eight days later. "We are going to protect the animals," federation director Marie Pierre Pé tells the Times—which points out that the delicacy is the result of force-feeding ducks and geese and removing their livers. DW reports the vaccination effort will cost $102 million, with the government covering 85% of that. The Times notes that's less than 10% of what the government paid to farmers who had been forced to cull their birds in 2021 and 2022.
The vaccination effort is the first of its kind in the EU. The US Agriculture Department in late September announced it would curtail the imports of ducks and other poultry from Europe as a result. The USDA explains its reasoning in a press release: "Vaccinated birds may not show signs of HPAI infection, which could lead to the export of infected live animals or virus-contaminated products to the United States." (More ducks stories.)
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