August 17, 2009

Scotland still wary of Brazilian beef controls

The National Farming Union in Scotland is still concerned about the systems and controls in place for beef processing in Brazil despite the improvements highlighted in a recent report from the EU Food and Veterinary Office (FVO).

Inspectors from the FVO visited a number of slaughterhouses, cold stores and farm holdings during January and February this year. They found the general controls for hygiene and traceability in slaughterhouses and cold stores to be satisfactory and noted improvements in the certification system since their last inspection.

However, NFU livestock board chairman Alistair Mackintosh still have doubts on the safety of Brazil's beef as there are still problems with animal identification and movement controls.

He also expressed disgust that the European Commission does not take this issue more seriously as "inspectors found instances where animals were not correctly accounted for, non-EU-approved animals were sent to EU-approved slaughterhouses and conflicts of interest existed among the official supervisors". Even with these serious problems the report still declares that the procedures in place in Brazil are good enough to comply with the Commission's requirements for import to the EU, he said.

Mackintosh said the Commission should again look at its findings and stop the certification of Brazilian beef farms until Brazilian authorities can provide convincing evidence that their farms can be relied on to meet EU standards.