Europe 1 with AFP 14:43 p.m., September 21, 2023

Epizootic haemorrhagic disease (HED) was detected in France after the first cases appeared in cervids and cattle. Farms in the Hautes-Pyrénées and Pyrénées-Atlantiques are home to these animal patients. "Management measures for this disease are being put in place," the agriculture ministry said in a statement.

The first cases in France of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (MHE), affecting cervids and cattle, were detected in farms in the Hautes-Pyrénées and Pyrénées-Atlantiques, said Thursday the Ministry of Agriculture in a statement. The ministry specifies in its statement that three farms are concerned in these two departments of the South-West and that "management measures of this disease are put in place by the services of the ministry in connection with professional organizations".

The export of live cattle has been totally banned in Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, Landes, Gers, Haute-Garonne and Ariège, and partly in six neighbouring departments (Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Tarn-et-Garonne, Tarn, Aude and Pyrénées-Orientales). According to the Basque trade union ELB, exports are also "blocked" to Spain and Italy for fattening, but not for the immediate slaughter of cattle.

>> READ ALSO - Anxiety, anger, illness: how contact with animals can improve our well-being

Less than 1% mortality in cattle

Discovered in the United States in 1995, HEM mainly affects cervids and cattle and is transmitted by biting midges. It causes fever, weight loss, oral lesions, breathing difficulties in animals and "generates only a very low mortality," says the ministry. "There is less than 1% mortality in cattle but the virus can be very deadly in cervids, with mortality rates of more than 90% observed in the United States," said Stephan Zientara, director of the animal health laboratory of the French National Agency for Health Security (ANSES).

"We do not yet know how the virus will affect European cervids," he adds, while ANSES had indicated in May that it had detected the disease for the first time in Europe in autumn 2022, in Sardinia and then in Sicily. Its arrival on the continent is according to the health agency a consequence of climate change, which allows the midge vectors to survive. Epizootic haemorrhagic disease is not transmissible to humans and no vaccine is yet available against the type of virus identified in Europe.