A cattle ranch in Brazil Paulo Whitaker (Portal)
Brazil detected a case of so-called mad cow disease on Wednesday and immediately suspended beef exports to China this Thursday, as required by a bilateral protocol for situations like this. The disease was diagnosed in a nine-year-old cow on a small farm in Marabá, in the state of Pará in northern Brazil. The animal was euthanized and cremated and the property was quickly isolated. According to Brazilian authorities, he ate weed, making it less likely he had developed the most dangerous form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
The World Organization for Animal Health (OMAS) was quickly notified of the case and samples were sent to that institution’s reference laboratory in Canada, where it will be clear in the next few days how he contracted the disease. There are two possibilities: the atypical, when it occurs spontaneously due to the cow’s old age, or by contagion, when she eats feed made with contaminated animal protein, such as: B. Flour made from meat and bones of other species. In Brazil, this practice is forbidden.
In 2022, Brazil exported $13 billion worth of beef, up 42% year-on-year, and China bought more than half of that meat, according to the Foreign Trade Ministry.
The new Lula government’s Minister of Agriculture and Livestock, Carlos Fávaro, said in an interview with a radio station that it was “very likely” that we were dealing with the atypical version of the disease, which poses no risk of spreading to the rest the herd or transmission to humans. He also reassured the population by saying that there was no risk of consumption.
Despite this, hours after the case was confirmed, Brazil halted beef exports to China, its main buyer. It is a protocol and a preventive measure as the Asian giant is one of the most demanding importers and has this deal with Brazil. In 2021, China spent more than 100 days not importing Brazilian beef after two cases of mad cow disease were detected in the states of Mato Grosso and Minas Gerais.
Now the Brazilian authorities want to avoid at all costs a new blow that the veto could deal to the thriving livestock industry, one of the pillars of the economy. “When the market stops exporting, it creates a certain fear and that moves the meat market a little negatively, but our job is to act quickly and transparently in order to be able to return to normality as soon as possible,” explained the minister .
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The government is already launching a diplomatic offensive to reassure its buyers as China’s veto could be mimicked by other countries in the coming days, triggering a worrying domino effect. The minister and his staff will be in touch with the agricultural authorities of other prominent importers such as the United States, Chile, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Philippines in the next few hours for statements.
Two secretaries from the Ministry of Agriculture will travel to Beijing immediately to warn the Chinese government that Brazilian beef is safe to eat despite the outbreak of mad cow disease. The Brazilian government is confident that exports will already be normalizing when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva visits Beijing in the coming weeks, probably at the end of March.
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