HPAI in France: veterinary services learned to improvise when epidemic plans were no longer enough

A decade of highly pathogenic avian influenza epidemics repeatedly pushed French veterinary services beyond the limits of existing plans, procedures and resources. A new interdisciplinary study shows that successful outbreak management often depended on “organizational bricolage”: adapting available tools, people and relationships in real time when standardized procedures could no longer cope with the scale and complexity of the crisis.

The study moves away from the usual epidemiological analysis of HPAI and focuses instead on the people and organisations responsible for managing successive outbreaks. Researchers interviewed 12 stakeholders involved in French HPAI control, including local, regional and national veterinary-service officials, wildlife experts, private poultry veterinarians and a poultry-industry representative. Participants reconstructed how management strategies evolved through successive epidemic waves.

Five epidemic waves repeatedly overwhelmed the system

France experienced five major HPAI waves between 2016 and 2023, initially concentrated in duck-producing areas of the Southwest before expanding into the Greater West poultry basin in 2021–2022 and 2022–2023.

The 2021–2022 epidemic alone generated estimated direct production losses of €170 million, with indirect losses reaching €705 million.

Repeated crises exposed limits in staffing, logistics and standardized outbreak procedures. The authors found that existing strategies and resources were frequently insufficient for the situations encountered on the ground. Veterinary services therefore developed new operational solutions progressively rather than simply implementing predefined emergency plans.

“Organizational bricolage” became part of disease control

The researchers describe this process using a concept borrowed from management science: organizational bricolage, reorganising available resources to solve unexpected problems.

In practice, veterinary services had to adjust procedures, redistribute resources and create new forms of coordination as epidemics evolved. The study identifies three conditions that made this possible:

• individual skills, particularly technical expertise and the ability to communicate and negotiate;

• coordination and trust between public authorities, private veterinarians and poultry-sector stakeholders;

• and an enabling environment, including sufficient human and material resources.

Emergency preparedness cannot rely only on increasingly detailed protocols. People managing outbreaks also need enough operational autonomy to adapt those protocols when real-world conditions differ from what planners anticipated.

Public–private cooperation became essential

French veterinary governance has historically been relatively vertical, with government veterinary services retaining formal responsibility for epidemic management. But repeated HPAI crises forced much closer collaboration with private veterinarians, poultry organisations, farmers, wildlife specialists and regional authorities. This became particularly important because the French poultry sector is highly heterogeneous, combining industrial production, duck systems, free-range holdings and smaller alternative production models. A control measure that works in one production system may therefore be difficult or inappropriate in another.

The authors describe HPAI management as a “wicked problem”: one characterised by changing epidemiology, multiple stakeholders, conflicting constraints and no single permanent solution.

Vaccination changes the problem but does not remove it

France progressively strengthened HPAI control through culling, movement restrictions, biosecurity requirements, pre-movement testing and compulsory housing during periods of elevated risk. A major strategic change came in October 2023 with compulsory nationwide vaccination of ducks. But vaccination has not eliminated the organisational challenge.

Outbreaks have still occurred in a vaccination context, while vaccination itself creates additional requirements for surveillance, logistics and financing. The authors therefore argue that long-term HPAI preparedness must account not only for technical control measures but also for the organisational capacity required to implement and adapt them.

A timely echo in France’s new animal-health governance

The study is particularly timely. On 13 October 2026, France unveiled a new animal-health governance framework explicitly intended to move the system away from repeated emergency management and towards continuous prevention, surveillance and preparedness. The reform strengthens the strategic role of the CNOPSAV, introduces a new operational animal-health committee and a dedicated scientific committee, and promotes collective-interest health programmes allowing livestock sectors to prepare surveillance, vaccination or other preventive measures before crises occur.

In that sense, the policy response appears to formalise some of the lessons described in the HPAI study: clearer coordination, stronger veterinary capacity, better data and surveillance systems, and closer integration of public and private actors, while preserving the ability to adapt when predefined plans meet unexpected realities.

Preparedness also means allowing adaptation

One of the study’s strongest messages is that resilience does not mean following emergency plans perfectly. Effective epidemic management requires a combination of preparedness and flexibility. Plans, procedures and chains of command remain essential, but outbreak managers also need the authority, skills, resources and trusted professional networks that allow them to modify those plans when circumstances change.

This human and organisational dimension is often much less visible than surveillance data, vaccination coverage or outbreak curves. Yet after a decade of HPAI in France, the study suggests it has become a central component of veterinary preparedness and one that France’s latest governance reform is now attempting to institutionalise.