November 28, 2007

Russia to lift ban on Brazilian meat

Russia, on December 1, will remove a two-year-old ban on beef and pork imports from eight Brazilian states, the country's animal and plant health watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said on Tuesday (November 27).

A Rosselkhoznadzor spokesman said the ban --due to foot-and-mouth-disease-- would be lifted from the states of Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Goias, Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Parana, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. The removal of the ban was due to the absence of the disease for a year.

He added that from January 2008, all meat imported from Brazil are required to have a special label to avoid illegal replacement.

In a separate statement, Rosselkhoznadzor said it warned 19 Brazilian meat processing plants over continuous violations of meat safety standards.

The agency's representatives working in the Brazilian ports of Santos and Itajai have discovered that various meat shipments bound for Russia are no longer frozen.

For this reason, Russian inspectors suspended 38 containers of meat products early this month. A 25-tonne shipment of poultry products was also rejected due to discovery of salmonella bacteria.

Despite repeated warnings, two plants were found to have violated standards anew, thus resulting to another ban.

Rosselkhoznadzor said Russia's imports of Brazilian red and poultry meat were estimated at between 800,000 and 1 million tonnes in the last few years.