A clear example of the damage avian flu can cause in the commercial breeding sector is what happened last April at Canards du Lac Brome, a major producer of ducks and duck products based in Knowlton, Estrie. .
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That month, the disease was detected at four of the company’s 13 production sites, necessitating the euthanasia of tens of thousands of ducks and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of incubating eggs, a very large part of the company’s production.
A disastrous situation confirmed by the director general, Angela Anderson, in a press release published on April 20 when only three sites had been declared contaminated.
“After two major fires, the difficult COVID-19 context from which we have recovered over the past few years, we really thought we had seen it all. This time, the hill to climb will be greater than anything we have overcome so far and we cannot do it alone,” Ms. Anderson said that day, meaning that the help of governments will be essential to takeover of the company.
At that time, Canards du Lac Brome predicted that the supply of distribution channels would cease within four to five weeks and that “it would be difficult to envisage a recovery before a minimum of 10 to 12 months” .
Canards du Lac Brome, a Canadian leader in its sector of activity, which had more than 300 people in its employ when the avian flu hit it, immediately made it a priority to “put in place a imposing recovery plan whose ultimate objective will be to minimize the impact on human resources, essential to the restart of 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 reorganization.
“As far as we are concerned, all our energies are put into the realization of a structured, concrete and achievable recovery plan. There is nothing in particular to report at the moment,” replied André Michaud, president of Agro Québec, a consulting firm in the agri-food sector, to whom our message was transferred.
The four Brome Lake Ducks production sites affected by avian flu are those of Saint-Claude, Knowlton, Wotton and Saint-Georges-de-Windsor.
