DEVELOPMENT-BRAZIL: Disease Dims Meat Export Dreams

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 12 2000 (IPS) - Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), a highly contagious febrile virus that affects livestock, is threatening Brazil’s dream of becoming the world’s leading exporter of beef.

FMD, which affects cloven-footed animals like cattle, pigs and sheep, reappeared last month in Brazil precisely in the region where the fight to eliminate the disease had made the most progress.

The states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, where cattle had remained free of the virus for seven years, had hoped to be certified next year as FMD-free without vaccination.

But that could prove an elusive goal, at least for Rio Grande do Sul, where 20 focal points of the disease have been detected in three municipalities near the Argentine border. As a result, the state could be categorised as an area of high epizootic risk.

Cattle and unprocessed beef in Rio Grande do Sul would be left out of the international markets as well as Brazil’s domestic inter-state markets.

More than 3,600 head of cattle were slaughtered in an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus, but a fourth municipality is now suspected of contamination as well.

The available measures to fight FMD consist primarily of isolating the infected region and slaughtering potentially infected cattle, pigs and sheep.

But ranchers resist accepting the slaughter of their herds, fearing they will not be compensated for the loss – an attitude that jeopardises the effectiveness of the campaign to eradicate the disease.

In a sharp response to the ranchers’ position, the Agriculture Ministry’s secretary of agricultural defence, Luiz Carlos de Oliveira, threatened to isolate the entire state of Rio Grande do Sul, just as occurred last year in another state with outbreaks of the disease near the Paraguayan border.

FMD does not affect humans, but infected livestock suffer ulcers of the mouth and the digestive tract. This causes weight loss -and often death – as the animals are unable to absorb nutrients. As a result, markets that import beef, pork or mutton close their doors to countries that pose a risk of spreading the disease.

Infection occurs through contact between animals, though it is also an air-borne virus, potentially travelling in the clothing of the people working in a contaminated area. Unprocessed meat and bones also carry the disease.

Because FMD is so highly contagious, buyers reject meat coming from any country where the virus has been detected. The disease has also recently resurfaced in Paraguay and in three provinces in Argentina.

Brazil has carried out a major campaign to combat FMD in recent decades, but faces difficult conditions because ranching is so widespread. Livestock are often raised in far-flung pastures where rigorous health controls are nearly impossible to impose. In addition, a major portion of the meat sold domestically continues to come from clandestine slaughterhouses.

The nation’s herd is enormous, estimated at more than 160,000 head. With advances in vaccinations and livestock technology, productivity has increased – with meat exports expanding along with it.

In May, the International Office of Epizootics recognised five states in central and western Brazil as FMD-free, though only as long as vaccinations are maintained. This certification added nearly 80 million cattle to the herd approved for export to markets with the highest beef standards, such as Japan, the United States and Europe.

These advances led Agriculture minister Marcus Pratini de Moraes to predict that Brazil would take over the lead in meat exports worldwide by 2004 and that annual income from the sector would reach five billion dollars – more than twice the current total.

His forecast was also based on the extensive development of poultry, which tripled production in the last decade. Brazil exports six million tonnes of chicken annually, bringing in approximately one billion dollars, according to the national poultry producers’ association.

Expectations this year are for 650,000 tonnes in beef exports, twice the 1997 total, a volume that should earn 850 million dollars. But these estimates do not take into account the reductions caused by FMD in the Brazilian south.

Without a clear eradication of the 20 FMD focal points there, which would remove fear of contagion, exports will feel the effects for the next few years, warn market analysts.

Sales of unprocessed meat to the United States would be postponed, for example. The enormous US market is open for competition but has very strict health requirements, said Enio Marques, head of the Brazilian Association of the Meat Exporting Industry and, until last year, secretary of the government’s agricultural defence division.

Most of the meat Brazil exports is processed – cooked or canned – and does not pose a risk for FMD infection. But exporters are fighting for a piece of the market for meat ‘in natura,’ which brings higher prices.

The fight against FMD has become one of “no holds barred,” in which the interests of the ranchers and farmers harmed by the process are largely ignored. Farmers in the quarantined municipalities in the Brazilian south, for example, are even prevented from planting their crops and now fear losing the next harvests of soya and other summer grains.

But authorities are keeping history’s lessons in mind. Brazil lost its leadership role in cacao and cotton exports – two products the country now has to import – due to plagues that wiped out those crops.