BRAZIL: Feeling the Heavy Impact of Foot-and-Mouth Outbreak

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 20 2005 (IPS) - The 11,000 residents of Eldorado in Brazil have been plunged into a state of anxiety and uncertainty by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). The local meat processing plant has shut down its operations, forced its 600 permanent workers to take early vacations, and laid off the newly hired employees still considered to be on trial.

Small dairy farmers in the area are dumping the milk they are unable to consume, because they cannot sell it, in a municipality that produces an average of 11,500 litres of milk a day. Local businesses are also starting to feel the impact of a sharp decline in customers.

This grim panorama was described to IPS by Marta Maria de Araujo, a high-level local official in Eldorado. The first cases of the disease were confirmed Oct. 8 on the Vezozzo ranch in the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, near the Paraguayan border, and resulted in the slaughter of 582 head of cattle and a number of other animals.

The economy of Eldorado, which is located in southern Mato Grosso do Sul, is totally dependent on cattle farming. According to official statistics, there are ten head of cattle for every person living in the municipality.

One third of the people living in and around the town of Eldorado live directly or indirectly off of the meat processing plant, commented Tereza Cristina da Costa, director of the Mato Grosso do Sul Federation of Agriculture and Cattle Farming (FAMASUL).

Three new outbreaks of FMD were confirmed Monday in Eldorado and in the neighbouring municipality of Japorán, while another two cases are still under study.

As a result, Eldorado and four other municipalities, all located near the border with Paraguay, have been cordoned off and prohibited from transporting livestock, as a means of preventing the virus that causes the disease from spreading.

The safety measures adopted also included an order to slaughter 4,645 head of cattle and 202 sheep, goats and pigs on the four properties where FMD was diagnosed in 120 animals.

Cattle farmers in Japorán, however, are defying the order, refusing to slaughter their herds until they have been guaranteed compensation from the government.

But it is not only these five municipalities that are suffering the effects of FMD. The other states in Brazil have suspended purchases of all types of meat and live cattle from Mato Grosso do Sul, the state hardest hit by the ban on meat imports from Brazil now adopted by over 40 countries.

Some nations, like Russia, have prohibited imports from Matto Grosso do Sul while continuing to buy meat from the rest of Brazil. Others have banned the entry of meat from a number of Brazilian states or the country as a whole.

The economic impact has been devastating for Mato Grosso do Sul, because cattle farming accounts for one third of the state’s gross domestic product, and the entire meat industry production chain has ground to a halt, Da Costa told IPS.

The 34 meat processing plants in the state employ between 700 and 1,500 workers each. The state is also home to the largest cattle herd in Brazil, with a total of 25 million head, and 47 percent of its beef production is exported to other countries. Mato Grosso do Sul also supplies large quantities of live cattle to neighbouring states, such as Sao Paulo, Brazil’s leading exporter.

As a result, meat processing plants in Sao Paulo have felt the pinch as well, and have already put 2,000 workers on early vacation, while threatening to lay off 30 percent of their 70,000 employees.

The situation in Mato Grosso do Sul is critical, because the blow suffered now by the cattle industry has come on top of two consecutive years of failed crops due to irregular rainfall, reported Auro Otsubo of the state-run Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa).

Soybeans are another major source of income for Mato Grosso do Sul, and the sector has also been affected by the drop in prices on the world market, he added.

Producers in all sectors are also suffering the effects of the overvaluation of the Brazilian currency, the result of a Central Bank monetary policy that makes Brazilian exports less competitive on the world market and reduces the local income earned on goods sold abroad.

In Eldorado there are farmers who lost “over 70 percent, and up to 100 percent” of their soybean, corn or cotton crops this past season because of the critically low water levels in the region, reported Araujo.

The agricultural sector in Mato Grosso do Sul is suffering the most critical conditions of the last ten years, and cattle farmers in particular are facing an “unexpected and frustrating” situation, because the state practices “exemplary” animal health measures, and all cattle are vaccinated, said da Costa, an agronomist and cattle farmer.

There are suspicions that the FMD virus responsible for the most recent cases of the disease entered the country from Paraguay, since the last outbreaks, recorded in the late 1990s, also occurred in municipalities near the Paraguayan border.

According to another rumour, the reason for the outbreak is that Brazilian farmers have purchased cheaper and less reliable vaccines from Paraguay.

The FMD virus strain that caused the latest cases of the disease in Brazil has been present in South America for years, which means that the vaccines used should be effective against it, reported the Pan American Foot and Mouth Disease Centre (PANAFTOSA). This has led to the hypothesis that the vaccines were improperly stored or applied in these cases.

FMD is a viral disease that rarely affects human beings, but causes fever, malaise and painful lesions in cattle, sheep, pigs and other animals that provide meat for human consumption. It can be fatal for young animals, while causing weight loss, stunted growth and decreased milk production in others.

In an agreement with international health authorities, Brazil has divided the country into a number of regions, so that outbreaks in one area do not necessarily affect exports from others. Nevertheless, it is up to each importing country to adopt its own decisions.

The European Union, for example, has banned beef from Mato Grosso do Sul, Sao Paulo and Paraná, the states that account for the lion’s of the South American giant’s foreign exports.

Most of Brazil is considered free of FMD with vaccination, but there are large areas in the north that are not FMD-free and where it is difficult to monitor the transport of animals.

Nevertheless, significant progress has been made in fighting the disease over the last two decades. There was a point more than 20 years ago when 8,000 outbreaks were recorded around the country.