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Virus decimates oyster stocks
Source: Agencies |
December 23, 2010, Thursday
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Print Edition
FRENCH oyster lovers may have to go without one of their favorite Christmas treats this year as a persistent killer virus has eaten into stocks and has driven up prices by as much as 40 percent.
Oyster Herpesvirus type 1, or OsHV-1 - a herpes virus that is deadly for baby oysters - first struck in France in 2008, wiping out juveniles in droves.
As the briny-tasting molluscs take three years to plump up to a good size for eating, this is the first festive season the shortage will be felt. French looking to tuck into oysters at Christmas and New Year feasts may soon be disappointed.
"You could say this is our last big Christmas," said Renan Henry, an oyster producer who last year set up the Committee to Save Oyster Farming, or CNC, over the virus. He said a third of France's oyster breeders could go bust in 2011.
The CNC national shellfish farming committee says oyster production has dropped to 80,000 tons this year from 130,000 tons in normal times, sending prices up by as much as 40 percent.
France is the world's fourth-largest oyster producer after China, Japan and Korea, with some 4,000 mainly family-owned breeding farms along its shores employing some 11,000 people.
Oyster farms in Asia have so far been unaffected by the epidemic, which has prompted hopes that a species which is resistant to the virus could be found.
Oyster Herpesvirus type 1, or OsHV-1 - a herpes virus that is deadly for baby oysters - first struck in France in 2008, wiping out juveniles in droves.
As the briny-tasting molluscs take three years to plump up to a good size for eating, this is the first festive season the shortage will be felt. French looking to tuck into oysters at Christmas and New Year feasts may soon be disappointed.
"You could say this is our last big Christmas," said Renan Henry, an oyster producer who last year set up the Committee to Save Oyster Farming, or CNC, over the virus. He said a third of France's oyster breeders could go bust in 2011.
The CNC national shellfish farming committee says oyster production has dropped to 80,000 tons this year from 130,000 tons in normal times, sending prices up by as much as 40 percent.
France is the world's fourth-largest oyster producer after China, Japan and Korea, with some 4,000 mainly family-owned breeding farms along its shores employing some 11,000 people.
Oyster farms in Asia have so far been unaffected by the epidemic, which has prompted hopes that a species which is resistant to the virus could be found.
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