Brazil ban will continue
Last Friday, nine new outbreaks were found, bringing to 14 the number of cases of clinically diagnosed cattle.
The disease may have spread from Mato Grosso do Sul to the neighbouring state of Parana; laboratory results on suspect animals in Parana were expected in mid-week.
Early this week, 43 countries had suspended Brazilian meat imports, with the country’s No 2 beef customer, Egypt, joining the list.
Farm groups throughout Ireland and the UK were anticipating major shifts in cattle supply and demand, mainly due to expectations of Russia, Brazil’s biggest beef customer, turning to Ireland as an alternative beef source.
However, importers could instead turn to other South American beef suppliers, such as Argentina, where the industry has recovered from a foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001, and now exports fresh beef to 89 markets.
The world’s third-ranked beef exporter, behind Brazil and Australia, expects its exports to surge in the months ahead as importers that formerly relied on Brazil for beef turn to Argentina.
However, South America’s bad cattle disease record may push EU importers towards higher quality EU meat. The EU has banned imports of de-boned and matured bovine meat slaughtered in Brazil on and after September 29, and the UK, Ireland’s main export destination, is primarily affected, being Brazil’s fourth largest beef customer, after Russia, Egypt and Chile.
Meanwhile, recriminations in Brazil over the disease outbreak which has crippled the country’s $2.24 billion per year international beef trade may have revealed flaws in the country’s disease control.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Europe this week, has said ranchers were responsible for the problem, not a lack of resources or poor monitoring by Brazilian state and federal officials.
Gustavo Ruiz Diaz, Paraguay’s Agriculture Minister, alleged that Brazil knew about the foot and mouth outbreak as early as September 26, but did not make a public announcement until October 10.
Early this week, officials said they were 90% certain that the disease is in the neighbouring state of Parana , because the group of animals with symptoms came from Mato Grosso do Sul.
Health officials have suggested that foot and mouth vaccines used in Parana may have been poorly handled or administered, making them less effective or even useless against the disease.
The disease outbreak in Brazil has led to new allegations that the UK’s devastating foot and mouth epidemic, which began in February 2001, may have come from the Whitburn army training camp, near Sunderland. The army had been importing beef from Brazil and Uruguay, two of the strongholds of the type-O strain which infected British herds.
The Ministry of Defence insisted that it came from “disease-free regions” of South America. But one of them was Mato Grosso do Sul, the state in which foot and mouth was discovered this month.
However, the British government blamed the 2001 outbreak on a Northumberland pig farm on meat imported by Chinese restaurants.
