The former use of chlordecone (CLD), a chlorinated polycyclic ketone pesticide, in French West Indies to fight against banana black weevil, has resulted in long-term pollution of soils. CLD may be transferred to animals through involuntary polluted soil ingestion. However, due to different properties of clays, tropical volcanic soils display variable capacities of pollutant retention: CLD is more persistent in andosol than in nitisol. The impact of soil type on CLD bioavailability has been assessed via relative bioavailability (RBA) studies in three farm animal species (laying hens, piglets and lambs). Thus, the response of CLD ingestion through andosol and nitisol was compared to the response obtained with CLD ingestion through oil, taken as a reference matrix. Our hypotheses were that: (1) CLD would be less available in soils than in oil; (2) CLD would be less available in andosol than in nitisol; and (3) RBA in soils may differ between animal species. The deposition of CLD in egg yolk (hens), in liver (piglets) and in serum (lambs) was measured in individually housed animals fed graded levels of CLD from polluted andosol, nitisol or spiked oil. Hens, piglets and lambs were exposed to CLD during 28, 14 and 15 days, respectively. For each animal species, the concentration of CLD in target tissue linearly increased with the amount of ingested CLD within each ingested matrix (P<0.001). However, the responses to andosol-diets, nitisol-diets and oil-diets could not be differentiated (P>0.1), indicating that CLD was equally bioavailable, irrespective of the matrix. These results demonstrate that: (1) soil does not modulate CLD availability; and (2) ingestion of polluted soils by farm animals contributes to farm animal contamination.