Brazilian Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply Blairo Maggi on Friday announced he is to travel to the US to fight a ban on Brazilian beef imports, but the nation’s meat industry is already reeling.
“Brazil could lose a lot if it isn’t able to get this decision reversed,” Maggi said in the wake of the US Department of Agriculture’s announcement on Thursday of a ban on imports of fresh Brazilian beef due to “recurring” food safety concerns.
Brazil is the world’s leading beef and poultry exporter.
Photo: AFP
Officials spent Friday defending the quality of the nation’s beef, part of one of the economy’s most important sectors.
“We know what we are doing and the federal inspection system is robust,” Brazilian Executive Secretary of Agriculture Eumar Novacki told a news conference.
Although the US imports only a sliver of Brazil’s fresh beef exports, it is a prestigious market.
“In the short term, the scale of purchases by the United States is not that great, but it sends a very important signal, telling other international buyers that there are problems,” MBAgro analyst Cesar de Castro Alves said.
The image problem is especially acute since Brazil had just been getting over a major scandal in March when 21 meat processors were accused by Brazilian police of adulterating bad quality meat and bribing inspectors, prompting about 20 countries — including chief beef markets China and Hong Kong — to suspend all Brazilian meat imports.
The bans caused havoc in the US$13 billion-a-year industry, which employs about 6 million people, before being lifted.
The US had imposed inspections on 100 percent of Brazilian meat imports since the March row, with US inspectors rejecting 11 percent of the products — compared with 1 percent from other nations.
In Brazil, the US clampdown is seen as partly influenced by trade rivalries as well as health concerns. The US is the world’s biggest beef producer.
“We do have a sanitation problem, but also big pressure from US producers who don’t want to see Brazilian beef there. We are major competitors on the world stage and we are selling them meat,” Maggi said.
This comes on the back of a breakthrough for the US last month when China authorized US beef imports for the first time in 13 years.
That might be coincidental, analysts say, but there is no question that Brazil’s industry feels it is taking hits from several directions.
“The US [ban] decision threatens Brazilian farmers even more when they are facing a series of difficulties,” the Confederation of Agriculture said.
At the eye of Brazil’s turbulent meat industry is the giant meatpacker JBS SA, which was caught up in the rotten meat and bribery scandal.
It has taken on an even higher profile after a top company executive accused Brazilian President Michel Temer of corruption.
Temer was secretly recorded by the owner of JBS parent company J&F Investimentos, Joesley Batista, allegedly agreeing to pay hush money to a politician.
The recording was handed over to prosecutors, who are pushing to bring Temer to trial as part of a plea bargain over massive corruption by J&F.
Batista and his brother avoided jail, but J&F must pay a record 10.3 billion reais (US$3.08 billion) in fines over 25 years.
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