France reshapes animal-health governance around prevention, surveillance and veterinary preparedness

France has unveiled a new framework for animal-health governance designed to move the system away from repeated emergency management and towards permanent preparedness. The most important announcements concern surveillance, veterinary organisation, collective prevention programmes and the coordination of disease-control decisions. The reform clarifies which costs should fall to the State and which should increasingly be borne collectively by livestock sectors.

The conclusions of the Assises du sanitaire animal, presented on 13 October by Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard, establish a new architecture for managing animal-health risks at a time when France is facing more frequent vector-borne and transboundary diseases.

Prevention and surveillance move to the centre of the system

The first major change is organisational. France intends to make the CNOPSAV, the National Council for Animal and Plant Health Policy, the main strategic body for animal health, responsible for setting national priorities and bringing together public authorities, veterinarians, livestock organisations and scientific expertise.

Below this strategic level, a new operational animal-health committee is expected to coordinate implementation during both routine surveillance and disease emergencies.

A dedicated scientific committee will also be created, providing a clearer mechanism for integrating epidemiological and scientific expertise into national decisions. A separate committee will bring together potential funders of animal-health programmes.

The reform therefore separates four functions that have often overlapped during recent crises: strategic decision-making, scientific assessment, operational management and financing.

Veterinary capacity and traceability are part of the reform

The government also intends to modernise the practical tools used to control outbreaks. The emergency agricultural legislation adopted in 2026 allows the government to revise animal-health governance by ordinance, including animal traceability information systems, the organisation of surveillance and control, and the conditions under which authorised veterinarians carry out official missions.

This veterinary component is important. Recent outbreaks have repeatedly shown that rapid detection, movement tracing, field investigation, vaccination and stamping-out depend on the availability of veterinarians and on reliable, interoperable data. The reform targets the operational infrastructure needed to detect and contain disease more quickly.

Collective health programmes become a central tool

Another major innovation is the development of "programmes sanitaires d’intérêt collectif" (PSICs). These collective-interest health programmes will allow individual livestock sectors to organise prevention, surveillance or control strategies for diseases considered priorities for that sector.

The objective is to move away from a model in which measures are largely improvised once a crisis begins. Instead, sectors would be able to define programmes in advance, including surveillance protocols, vaccination strategies or other preventive measures, subject to national health governance. The mechanism is particularly relevant for diseases whose epidemiology differs greatly between sectors — poultry influenza, vector-borne diseases in ruminants, African swine fever or foot-and-mouth disease preparedness.

A clearer division of financial responsibility

About financing, the government proposes a clearer distinction between prevention, surveillance and outbreak control. In broad terms, livestock sectors would take greater responsibility for financing preventive measures, including the purchase of vaccines when vaccination becomes an established part of routine prevention.

The State would retain responsibility for sovereign disease-control functions and continue to finance or co-finance surveillance where it falls under public-health or animal-health responsibilities.

Farmers whose holdings are officially declared infected would also continue to benefit from public compensation for animals slaughtered by administrative order.

Temporary State support could remain possible when entirely new preventive measures are introduced, as occurred when France launched compulsory vaccination of ducks against highly pathogenic avian influenza. Once a measure becomes part of normal production risk management, however, the government wants a larger proportion of the cost to shift towards livestock sectors.

FMSE could intervene before the crisis

The role of the FMSE, France's agricultural health and environmental risk mutualisation fund, would also be expanded. Until now, such mechanisms have largely focused on compensating losses. The reform would allow collective funds to contribute more directly to prevention and surveillance, provided this does not create additional public expenditure.

This change is intended to encourage investment before disease occurs rather than concentrating financial resources solely on compensation after outbreaks.

Why France is changing the system now

The reform has been under preparation since the Assises du sanitaire animal were launched on 30 January 2025. The original objective was to reassess a French animal-health model largely inherited from the États généraux du sanitaire held around 15 years earlier and adapt it to a very different epidemiological environment.

France has faced repeated episodes of highly pathogenic avian influenza, the arrival of bluetongue serotypes 3 and 8, epizootic haemorrhagic disease and, subsequently, lumpy skin disease. At the same time, African swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease have moved closer to French borders.

At the launch of the Assises, the ministry explicitly cited climate change, shortages or deployment difficulties for vaccines, emerging vector-borne diseases and intensifying international trade as reasons why the existing system required reform.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza demonstrated both the cost of crisis management and the potential value of prevention. During the 2021–2022 epidemic, around 22 million birds were culled, at a cost exceeding €1 billion. After nationwide duck vaccination was introduced in 2023, the following season's impact fell dramatically.

From crisis response to permanent preparedness

The most important change announced on 13 October is the decision to organise animal health around continuous surveillance, scientific anticipation, stronger veterinary coordination, collective prevention programmes and clearer operational governance.

The practical challenge now will be implementation. The PSIC framework, the new CNOPSAV structure, traceability-system changes and the distribution of responsibilities between the State, veterinarians and livestock sectors still need to be translated into regulations and operational procedures.