Brazil: sending meat to China should return by the end of the month

Abiec (Brazilian Association of Meat Exporting Industries) estimates that Brazilian beef exports to China should be resumed by the end of March.

Information is from the association’s president, Antônio Jorge Camardelli, in an interview with CNN on Sunday (5 Mar. 2023).

“The expectation is that, in the presence of President Lula, we will have the technical part settled, and this will be part of the political understanding to reverse the scenario by the end of the month,” he said.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) is scheduled to travel to China at the end of March.

He will be accompanied by 3 committees: the government, parliamentarians, and business people.

The meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is scheduled for Mar. 28.

One of the main points of the visit will be investments in the green economy.

Topics such as low-carbon agriculture, electric mobility, carbon market, green finances, and energy transmission should be on the agenda, according to the executive director of the CEBC (China-Brazil Business Council), Claudia Trevisan.

The Brazilian government also thinks it is possible to attract Chinese investments in infrastructure.

The Asian country has invested money in the sector in several places worldwide.

SUSPENSION

On Feb. 23, the Ministry of Agriculture and Cattle Raising voluntarily suspended exports to China shortly after Adepará (Agricultural Defense Agency of the State of Pará) confirmed a positive case of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy).

The disease is popularly called “mad cow disease”.

The interruption is a standard measure in compliance with a bilateral sanitary protocol between Brazil and China.

The exportation was also temporarily suspended to Thailand, Iran, Jordan, and Russia.

According to a statement released by the ministry on Thursday night (Mar. 2), the World Organization for Animal Health confirmed that the case in Pará is atypical.

This means the disease arose spontaneously in nature and has no risk of spreading to livestock or humans.

In the statement, the government also said it would schedule a virtual meeting with China to remove the embargo on beef exports to the country.

The contamination by the “mad cow disease” was communicated by Adepará (Farming Defense Agency of the State of Pará) on the last 22.

According to the agency, the infection was identified in one 9-year-old steer, from a small property in southwest Marabá (PA), with 160 head of cattle.

The farm was inspected and isolated. The contaminated animal was sent for analysis in a laboratory in Alberta, Canada.

The last time Brazil registered cases of “mad cow disease” was in September 2021: in slaughterhouses in Nova Canaã do Norte (MT) and Belo Horizonte (MG).

This is the 6th case in over 23 years of surveillance for the disease.

MAD COW DISEASE

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, popularly known as “mad cow disease”, affects the nervous system of cattle. The condition causes a change in cattle behavior, hence the name “mad cow.”

There are two forms of the disease: typical or classic and atypical.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, the disease is considered atypical “when it originates within the bovine organism itself, occurs in a spontaneous and sporadic way, and is unrelated to ingesting contaminated food”.

The classic form is transmitted through food, which can cause the contamination of more animals in the herd.

In the typical case, the transmission between animals occurs through the ingestion of meat and bone meal, nervous tissue, pig droppings, or any other type of food that contains animal protein in its composition.

In humans, the transmission is through ingesting contaminated meat or blood transfusion.

The damages of the disease in its classic form are the death of animals, the risk of transmission to man, and a possible suspension of meat exports from Brazil.

Feeding ruminants (cattle, bubaline, sheep, and goats) with poultry bedding (also known as chicken bedding) or residues from exploiting other animals is a federal crime.

These items can contain leftover feed, which can contaminate the herd.

With information from Poder360