08 nov Two Brazilian meat companies have sent fresh beef to the United States.
Several news sources reported last week that two Brazilian meat companies have sent fresh beef to the United States.
The United States had banned fresh beef from Brazil since 1999 until August 1 of this year when USDA announced that its Food Safety and Inspection Service had approved a rule to allow Brazil to ship 64,800 tonnes of fresh beef per year to the U.S. duty free. In return, the U.S. can export beef and beef products to that country.
According to USDA, Brazil is home to almost three times as many cattle as the United States, and has about two-thirds the number of people as the U.S.
NCBA is also worried about the regionalization strategy.
“Regionalization on highly communicable animal diseases is possible if appropriate and extremely rigorous firewalls are put in place…the risk to U.S. animal agriculture and to our cattle producers is far too great and the economic and animal health consequences too significant to move forward with this proposed rule without better establishing that an attitude of compliance and a sufficiently sophisticated infrastructure are present in Brazil to consistently perform all risk mitigation measures. Additional questions need to be answered and additional work needs to be done by APHIS to secure the necessary information to make responsible decisions that will safeguard the health and well-being of livestock in the United States,” they group commented in April.
On August 4, Montana Senator Jon Tester sent a letter asking U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack these questions:
- What steps has USDA taken to implement the recommendations the Government Accountability Office made for improving the emergency response to an animal disease outbreak?
- What steps did the FSIS take to ensure the Brazilian facilities are equivalent in nature to American facilities?
- What process will be in place to verify ongoing compliance?
- Is FSIS considering using third party verification?
- What processes will be implemented to track the movement Brazilian beef imports once they enter the US market?
- How will USDA make sure retailers are able to access the necessary information to voluntarily label beef products’ country of origin?”
As of Oct. 7, Secretary Vilsack had not responded to the letter.
Leo McDonnell, Director Emeritus, U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, is also concerned about compliance and integrity in regard to Brazil’s meat packing industry. “The problem is that too often Brazil adheres to a ‘do as I say- not as I do’ type of policy. Brazil has a lengthy history of WTO violations that continue to undercut all sectors of U.S. production agriculture. Despite this, Brazil is the first to leverage the WTO when it works in their favor,” said McDonnell.
Kansas State University professor of epidemiology and beef production Michael Sanderson has helped develop the Secure Beef Supply Plan, a strategy to deal with FMD if or when it enters U.S. soil.
Sanderson said the chance that FMD will travel on Brazilian beef and infect US animals is not high. “The likelihood is low, but it is difficult to say just how low. I am not aware of any data that indicates one company is more of a problem than another,” he said.
Cattle producers should maintain prudent animal health management practices.
The arrival of Brazilian fresh beef “hasn’t changed the risk of FMD that much,” he said.
“General good biosecurity practices are wise and have benefits for a number of other disease as well. Keeping good records of sources of cattle bought and destination of cattle sold will be very valuable should we have an outbreak. Everyone having a premises ID and being able to trace the incoming and outgoing cattle would be very beneficial in controlling an outbreak. Good health records of sickness and promptly calling your veterinarian for unusual signs will help to identify an outbreak early (which is very important for getting it stopped as quickly as possible). The level of biosecurity that will be needed in an FMD outbreak are not economical, practical or necessary right now with or without Brazilian beef.”
Besides the disease risk, Hanson believes market sentiment has been affected by the Brazilian beef import agreement.
“Just the announcement of the Brazilian Beef coming in, I think has had a lot to do with the CME board dropping continually over the last four to six weeks. You couple that with the 2015 spending bill that included a repeal of COOL, it’s basically been on a snowball, downward trend.”