By Anderson Scardoelli
Qatar has lifted restrictions on Brazilian beef.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAPA) confirmed the market reopened on Monday 29.
Qatar suspended the import of Brazilian beef in February this year.
At the time, Mapa had confirmed a case of mad cow disease on a farm in the countryside of Pará.
In March, tests detected that the mad cow disease was atypical, not generating risks to the herd or human health.
For exporters of animal protein, the Qatar market is a million-dollar market.
According to data from MAPA, beef exports to the Asian country moved 6,000 tons, which generated about US$36.9 million in foreign exchange revenue.
Since the announcement of the mad cow disease in Pará and the consequent diagnosis of an atypical case, other countries that had suspended imports had already resumed their purchases of Brazilian beef.
This was the case, for example, with Palestine, Russia, and Turkey.
China started importing the product again on March 23.
The Asian giant is the main destination of Brazilian beef, accounting for more than 50% of the market.
There are two types of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the technical name of the disease popularly known as mad cow disease: the classic and the atypical cases.
CLASSIC CASE
It refers to the ingestion of animal products by contaminated cattle.
It can cause outbreaks in herds and health problems in humans who consume meat from infected animals.
ATYPICAL CASE
Common in older cattle, which spontaneously develop a defective protein that reaches the central nervous system. This type of BSE poses no risk of dissemination to the herd or humans.
Brazil has never registered cases of the classical type of mad cow disease.
With information from Revista Oeste
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