The French government has announced that it will commit to limiting the impact of "bluetongue" by ensuring access to vaccines for the benefit of sheep farmers. Through a public procurement contract, doses for serotypes 1 and 8 will be made available by 2025.

Therefore, to anticipate the progression of bluetongue serotype 1, widespread in Spain, the government will order vaccines against this serotype to form a sanitary cordon to protect livestock in France. These vaccines, explains a note from the French Ministry of Agriculture, "will serve to vaccinate cattle and sheep farms in the departments of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Landes, Gers, Hautes-Pyrénées, Haute-Garonne, Ariège, Aude and Pyrénées-Orientales".

To ensure the supply of vaccines against bluetongue serotype 8, the government has decided to order 7 million doses to protect the sheep flock in metropolitan France, the most affected by excess mortality due to the disease in 2024. "By reducing viral circulation, this vaccination will also indirectly benefit all ruminant farms," says the ministerial note. All these vaccines (serotypes 1 and 8) ordered by the State will be made available free of charge to farmers this summer, via their health veterinarian.