A clear example of the damage that avian flu can do to the commercial farming sector is what happened last April at Canards du Lac Brome, a major manufacturer of ducks and duck products based in Knowlton, Estrie.
• Also read: When bird flu makes the birds rain…
• Also read: Avian flu in several regions: “Could be problematic”
• Also read: H5N1: very dangerous for birds, but practically not for humans
This month, the disease was detected at four of the company’s 13 production sites, requiring the euthanasia of tens of thousands of ducks and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hatching eggs, a very large part of the company’s production.
A catastrophic situation, confirmed by Director General Angela Anderson in a press release issued on April 20, when only three sites had been declared contaminated.
“After two major fires, the difficult COVID-19 context we’ve been recovering from in recent years, we really thought we’d seen it all. This time the hill to climb will be greater than anything we have climbed before and we cannot do it alone,” Ms. Anderson said on the day, meaning governments’ help will be essential to the company’s takeover .
At the time, Canards du Lac Brome forecast that supply to distribution channels would cease within four to five weeks and that “it would be difficult to envision a recovery at least 10 to 12 months ahead”.
Canards du Lac Brome, a leading Canadian company in its field that employed more than 300 people when it was struck by bird flu, immediately made it a priority to “devise an imposing recovery plan, the ultimate goal of which will be to minimize the impact.” on the human resources essential for resuming operations”.
This week, more than a month after the events, we attempted to contact Ms. Anderson to find out where the company was in its restructuring.
“As far as we are concerned, we are putting all our energy into implementing a structured, concrete and feasible recovery plan. Nothing special to report at the moment,” replied André Michaud, President of Agro Québec, an agri-food consultancy to which our message was forwarded.
Brome Lake Ducks’ four manufacturing sites affected by Avian Flu are Saint-Claude, Knowlton, Wotton and Saint-Georges-de-Windsor.