By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 10 2006 (IPS)

The reappearance of food-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Argentina has once again frustrated the hopes of beef producers and exporters in the Mercosur trade bloc, just when global market conditions are favourable due to health and climate problems faced by competitors outside the region.

Outbreaks of FMD detected last October in Brazil, in the west-central state of Mato Grosso and the southern state of Paraná, dealt a heavy blow to exports from that country, the world’s leading exporter of beef.

But now it is Argentina’s turn. An outbreak was reported this week on a farm in the northeastern province of Corrientes.

Stockbreeders in Argentina, the world’s third-largest exporter of beef, just celebrated a record year of sales: 1.39 billion dollars in exports, and a volume that was more 30 percent higher than the 2004 total.

The heavy flow in exports even fuelled a rise in prices on the domestic market, posing a challenge to government efforts to keep inflation in check.

But the outlook soon changed drastically. The National Animal Health Service (SENASA) declared a national animal health emergency Thursday as a result of the outbreak in Corrientes, where authorities immediately had the area cordoned off and ordered that all of the infected animals be slaughtered.

For their part, Russia and the European Union (EU), currently the biggest importers of Argentine beef, limited the ban to products from the affected area.

Philip Todd, a spokesman for EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou, said Friday that he believed the ban would remain limited to products from the districts where the FMD outbreak appeared in Corrientes.

The Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc, made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, accounts for 50 percent of the world’s beef exports. However, a joint action plan aimed at completely eradicating FMD from the member countries is still being studied.

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.

Agricultural engineer Alberto de las Carreras, the vice president of the Argentine Chamber of Exporters and author of the book FMD In Argentina, told IPS that the reappearance of the disease at this point in time is “catastrophic” for Argentina and its Mercosur partners.

“I have no doubt that many markets will be closed,” he stated, although he added that in all likelihood, the countries that adopt drastic preventive measures like banning beef imports from the entire country will later limit the restriction to products from the specific area where the cases were reported.

In any event, de la Carreras does not believe that the new outbreak of the disease will lead to a drop in prices, because international supplies are still low.

This opinion is shared by José Vicente Ferraz, technical director of the Brazilian agricultural consulting firm FNP Ferraz explained to IPS that the FMD outbreak has merely served to accentuate an already existing shortage of beef brought about by numerous factors, including the prolonged drought in Australia, the detection of a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or “mad cow disease” in the United States, and the FMD outbreak in Brazil last year.

This situation “obliges the international importing market to react pragmatically, by quickly lifting or relaxing any bans,” he noted.

To illustrate his point, Ferraz used the example of the impact of the FMD outbreak in Brazil, where beef exports in 2005 were actually 30 percent higher than in the previous year. The FMD-related bans on Brazilian beef merely slowed down the growth trend, and it is expected that the same will be true now for Argentina.

De las Carreras stressed that what is called for in such cases is restricting imports from specific regions, and that “overreacting” by banning imports from the country as a whole could be interpreted as a form of protectionism against a competing beef-exporting nation.

In addition, he pointed out that boneless cuts refrigerated for more than 48 hours cannot transmit the disease, which is why restrictions should also be limited to certain specific products, and not applied to beef exports in general.

Meanwhile, in Uruguay, another major beef exporter, the Ministry of Agriculture banned the entry of animal products and by-products that have not been heat treated until the extent of the outbreak in neighbouring Argentina is determined.

The Uruguayan ministry also went ahead with a previously planned trade mission to Mexico, a market that the country’s beef producers are hoping to break into.

As far as de las Carreras is concerned, the Mercosur trade bloc should “join forces” in the control of FMD, even if this means “ceding sovereignty” and allowing international inspections by the authorities of one of the member countries in one of the others. He even advocates the extension of this regional control to all of South America.

*Additional reporting by Mario Osava in Brazil and Raúl Pierri in Uruguay.

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