Measures were intensified to contain the spread of bird flu after the discovery of the disease at a turkey farm in the country’s east -- the first confirmed case of H5N1 in commercial poulty production in the European Union.
Immediately after confirmation on Saturday that at least 400 turkeys on the farm had died of H5N1, Japan and Hong Kong placed embargos on French imports on poultry products -- including prized foie gras.
On Sunday, authorities ordered a 10-day ban on anybody approaching small lakes in the Dombes region after the discover of about 50 dead swans and ducks in the past four days.
The news that 15 of the swans were confirmed to have the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu deepened a sense of crisis despite the government's best efforts to head off panic.
French President Jacques Chirac, attending the opening of a big agricultural fair in Paris on Saturday, pointedly ate pieces of chicken in front of the cameras as he declared consumers were safe despite the outbreak.
"There is no danger in consuming poultry and eggs," he said.
France -- the fourth-biggest poultry exporter in the world -- has 30,600 commercial poultry farms, which produce 700 million birds a year.
Virus spreads west
The deadly form of bird flu appeared to be taking hold in wild birds across Germany after more outbreaks in the north of the country and the first suspected cases in the region around the capital Berlin.
Switzerland meanwhile recorded its first case of H5 bird flu -- in a type of wild duck found near Geneva's water fountain -- and tests were underway to determine if it was the deadly H5N1 strain.
Romania said Sunday that the H5N1 strain of the virus had been found in the southeast of the country -- the country's 35th outbreak -- but tests were continuing to determine whether it was the highly pathogenic variant.
Meanwhile China, where bird flu was first discovered, warned of possible widespread outbreaks during the coming spring bird migratory season and announced two more human cases of the virus.
Indian officials slaughtered hundreds of thousands of chickens and checked around 90,000 people for bird flu symptoms in the north-western state of Gujarat as authorities ordered tests on dead birds in Assam in the northeast of the country.
Officials in northern Nigeria, where bird flu has been detected, sought to convince people to continue eating chicken and showed television pictures of top officials feasting on poultry.
Poultry farming is one of the country's biggest industries and the authorities fear that if it collapses, hundreds of thousands of people will be left without an income, with the potential for serious social unrest.
Better news came from Malaysia where five people quarantined with suspected bird flu have tested negative, a top health official said Sunday.
"All five have tested negative," Ramlee Rahmat, director of the health ministry's disease control division, told AFP.
Experts fear that H5N1, which has killed more than 90 people, mostly in Asia, since 2003, may mutate into a form that can pass between humans, sparking a pandemic that could kill millions.
Human fatalities from the disease have been recorded in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Iraq, Turkey and Vietnam.
Eight EU countries have so far confirmed cases of the deadly H5N1 strain, but until Saturday when it was discovered in a turkey farm in eastern France, all these cases had been found in wild birds.