The 2022–2023 HPAI epidemic season opened 1 August 2022. DGAL applied stamping-out on confirmed outbreak premises and pre-emptive culling in protection and surveillance zones throughout the season. Mandatory housing (mise à l’abri) was required for poultry during elevated risk-level periods; movement bans and mandatory truck covering for palmipeds over 3 days old were enforced. The ECDC and ESA Platform coordinated European surveillance; Anses (including its National Reference Laboratory at Ploufragan-Plouzané-Niort) provided outbreak diagnostics and virus characterisation. Two epidemic waves occurred: autumn-winter 2022 in Pays de la Loire and Deux-Sèvres; spring 2023 in Gers, Landes, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, and Hautes-Pyrénées. On 12 July 2023, Minister Marc Fesneau signed the arrêté lowering the national risk level to “négligeable,” lifting widespread nationwide restrictions. The Plateforme ESA’s “Bilan de la saison 2022–2023 d’influenza aviaire hautement pathogène en Europe” (finalised 24 June 2024) provides the authoritative French and European data. Duck vaccination was introduced in subsequent seasons as an additional control tool, outside the scope of this record.

Anticipated Effects

If the risk-level framework and associated mandatory housing and movement restrictions continue to be applied when HPAI risk levels are elevated in future seasons, they would conditionally reduce opportunities for virus introduction into poultry farms by limiting contact with wild birds during peak circulation periods.

If high-density duck production continues in southwestern regions with persistent HPAI circulation in wild bird populations, the ESA Platform’s analysis implies that future seasons with similar virus pressure could produce comparable outbreak patterns, leading to repeated large-scale culling operations.

Whether the poultry sector has fully recovered to pre-2022 production levels, or whether structural changes (including vaccination, modified stocking practices, or regional production shifts) have produced lasting changes in French poultry system configuration, is not fully established in available sources.

Significance Rationale

Assigned Reduces Exploitation (impact direction) because the 2022–2023 HPAI response resulted in the culling of approximately 32 million poultry nationally since 2022, a documented 4.3% reduction in the national poultry flock compared to 2021, and the disruption of production cycles across chicken, duck, and turkey sectors. These are documented contractions in the number of animals in French poultry production during and following the epizootic.

Assigned Changes Scale (impact type) because the primary mechanism is mandatory large-scale depopulation (culling) of infected and at-risk flocks, directly reducing the number of birds in French poultry production across affected premises and zones.

Assigned High significance because France recorded 396 poultry outbreaks (highest in Europe in 2022–2023) and accounted for 66% of EU birds dead or culled in EU-notified poultry outbreaks in the December 2022–March 2023 reporting window. The 32 million birds culled since 2022 — predominantly in this season — is the largest documented HPAI-related poultry culling event in SE’s database.

The scale change is transitional: the poultry system contracted due to mass culls and flock reductions, and partial recovery and rebuilding of poultry populations — including introduction of duck vaccination from autumn 2023 — have been documented.