00:00For more on this story, I'm joined on the set by our Solange Mougin.
00:03Solange, tell us a bit more about what exactly is this disease?
00:06Well, in English, it's called lumpy skin disease, and in French, la dermatose.
00:10And it's aptly named because it causes these very painful skin bumps on cattle.
00:15It also reduces their milk production, weakens them with fever.
00:19It kills about 10% of those cows or bovine animals that are infected.
00:23It is not transmissible to humans, luckily, but it does have a serious effect on the livelihood of farmers, notably the ability of France to trade and export livestock.
00:35Now, where does LSD, or lumpy skin disease, come from?
00:39Well, it first arrived in Europe a decade ago in 2014, likely from Africa, where it is widespread.
00:45The disease is contagious because it is transmitted by stinging through the bites of stable biting flies.
00:52Through their bites, they carry it from one bovine to another for a short period of time.
00:58As a side note to this in regard to climate change, these small flies, they are around in France nearly all year round now,
01:04which means that the cows can be infected all year.
01:09Now, there have been outbreaks in Europe before, notably in the Balkans in 2016 and 2017.
01:15But the outbreak that happened this past June in France via Italy was the first time that this disease has appeared in France.
01:22And since then, the government has been trying to eradicate it.
01:25And one of the things that has the farmers truly angry here in France is the strict sanitation protocol that we have here,
01:31which is what to do when there's just one single case of this disease.
01:34Yeah.
01:35Lumpy skin disease is classified as a Category A disease by the EU's animal health law, which has been in place since 2021.
01:42Now, the protocol, since LSD does not normally occur in Europe, it means that there must be an immediate eradication.
01:50So if one cow gets sick, then the entire herd must be killed.
01:54This culling is psychologically and also financially devastating to farmers.
01:58Hence their anger, with many, including some unions, not all though, saying that it is excessive.
02:04But the government insists that their three-pronged approach is necessary.
02:09One, to eradicate a herd when the disease appears.
02:12Two, to limit the movement of bovine animals and cows in a 50-kilometer radius of an outbreak.
02:19And the third prong is to massively vaccinate the bovine animals with vaccination of 600 to 1 million cows that is planned.
02:28And already about a million of France's 17 million cows and bovine animals have been vaccinated already.
02:34Solange, thank you for that update.
02:35France 24's Solange Moujean.
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