December 7, 2007

Brazil FMD controls not enough, says British scientist

A renowned British scientist has warned EU and Irish livestock farmers that Brazil's safety controls against foot and mouth disease (FMD) are not enough, thus its beef exports to EU may not be safe.

An analysis by Dr Tony Wilsmore of the Veterinary Epidemology and Economic Research Unit at the University of Reading revealed that Brazil's non-compliance and the lack of improvement in critical areas of control systems present a real danger for EU farmers, including those in Ireland.

"This risk analysis confirms that the systems failures throughout the export chain are of a magnitude to indicate that there is a significant possibility that FMD virus could enter the Community with imported Brazilian beef," said Wilsmore.

The analysis was jointly carried out by Wilsmore and Dr Bill Watson also of the University of Reading.

Dr Wilsmore added that the study also found a level platform does not exist for EU farmers who are competing with imports from Brazil for the beef market.

He warned that in this situation, EU security "can only rest on the final processing and beef maturing and de-boning in the export establishments". This, he said, is not totally adequate to ensure the safety of exported beef and "if the catalogue of failures identified by repeated EU missions to Brazil reflect the situation across the beef industry, one can have little confidence in the safety of the products imported from that country into the EU".

He said while standards and staff levels within the slaughter houses in Brazil were adequate, deficiencies were spotted in staff training and identification measures for livestock. Farm and movement records were also found to be inadequate. Wilsmore warned that because of the highly infectious nature of FMD and the major damaging effect which it has on the production of livestock, the consequences of its release in EU, though variable, are usually extremely serious.

He added: "The impact FMD can have in Europe has been demonstrated dramatically by the recent outbreaks in the UK. The outbreak in 2001 not only effected livestock keepers, but also the whole of the rural economy, including that part contributed by tourism and the total cost of the outbreak was estimated to be around 10 billion euros."