Brazil: Pará confirms case of mad cow, and government suspends exports to China

In a statement published on Wednesday (22), the government of Pará confirmed a case of mad cow disease in the state.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Mapa) announced the investigation of the possible contamination on Saturday 20th.

Due to the infected animal, the federal authorities suspended exports to China.

“The Agricultural Defense Agency of the State of Pará (Adepará) informs that the result of a suspected case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy [mad cow disease] in a small locality in the southeast of the state, in a property that has 160 heads of cattle – already isolated by the agency – was positive,” it informed.

“The property was inspected and preventively interdicted.”

According to Mapa, it was a 9-year-old male animal, and the farm is in Marabá.

The city is about 600 kilometers from the capital Belém.

After the slaughter, the animal’s contaminated carcass was incinerated on site, informed Mapa.

According to information from the Ministry, the animal was raised on pasture and without the use of feed.

To confirm the contamination, the Brazilian authorities sent samples to a laboratory in Canada.

According to Adepará, “the symptoms indicate that it is the atypical form of the disease”.

The text also says that this variation appears spontaneously in nature, “causing no risk of dissemination to livestock and humans.

MAD COW AND EXPORTS

“All measures are being taken immediately at each stage of the investigation, and the matter is being treated with total transparency to guarantee Brazilian and world consumers the recognized quality of our meat,” said Carlos Favaro, Minister of Agriculture.

Currently, Brazil is the largest global exporter of beef.

Last year, shipments of this protein earned the country about US$13 billion.

Most of this amount, however, came from the Chinese market.

Alone, the Asian giant was responsible for 60% of this revenue.

With information from Revista Oeste