France to cull 600,000 more ducks as fights bird flu virusFrance will cull a further 600,000 ducks as part of efforts to prevent a spread of the H5N8 bird flu virus, the country's farming minister Stephane Le Foll said on Tuesday. An employee works on a rack of slaughtered ducks at a poultry farm in Eugenie les Bains, France, January 24, 2017, as France scales back preventive slaughtering of ducks to counter bird flu after the culling of 800,000 birds this month helped slow the spread of the disease. The latest cull will take place in the Landes region of southwest France, which is home to the most of the country's foie gras producers. We know that there is still an area remaining where we will have to take action to cull all the ducks," Le Foll told the France Bleu regional radio station. Foie gras producers have estimated the number of poultry killed or culled due to bird flu in France at more than 3.2 million birds, and have forecast this would rise to 3.4 million as the government extended its culling measures.

Source: VietNamNet News February 21, 2017 08:48 UTC