Brazil Admits Exports of Uninspected Beef to EU

Brazil admits exports of uninspected beef to EU

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) — Brazil’s Minister of Agriculture Reinhold Stephanes admitted Wednesday that Brazilian exporters had sold beef that had not undergone proper sanitary inspections, contributing to the embargo on the product by the European Union (EU) last week.

In a session of the Brazilian Congress Agriculture Committee, Stephanes explained that slaughterhouses had exported inspected and uninspected beef before the EU’s new importing rules for the product became valid on Feb. 1.

He said the first mistake was committed in 1995, when the Brazilian government signed an agreement with the EU, accepting conditions that it was not yet ready to fulfill. He also informed that, of the 2,700 farms listed as eligible beef exporters at the time, only 600 met all the tracking requirements established by the bloc.

Stephanes claimed that the slaughterhouses must lead the tracking and inspection process of the product to be exported, by favoring certified livestock farmers. He is in support of exporters paying extra for inspected beef, stimulating tracking and certification.

He also said that the ministry plans to present Thursday in Brussels a list of farms that are eligible to export beef to the EU. Although the bloc insists on limiting the initial number of farms to 300, he expects to increase that total to 700.

However, the minister believes the embargo imposed by the EU was an “exaggerated” measure, motivated mainly by commercial reasons, rather than by sanitary purposes.

According to him, as Brazilian beef is more competitive due to its quality and low production cost, European cattle breeders are putting the bloc under pressure, arguing that the country’s control system is not reliable. In his opinion, the European farmers are trying to recover the share they had in the market before the embargo on their products, prompted by the mad cow disease outbreak in 2003.

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