December 14, 2012

Brazil reassures safety of beef after BSE report

Brazil's agriculture officials have reassured the safety of the country's beef after a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has been reported.

The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) announced last week that a sample taken from a breeding cow that died two years ago in the Brazilian state of Parana had tested positive for the disease. Japan immediately banned imports of Brazilian beef, stating the ban would remain until authorities had more information on the circumstances surrounding the case.

Officials from Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA) met with Japanese authorities to deliver a full veterinary and technical report in the hope of lifting the ban. MAPA said it would organise further technical missions to Brazil's 20 major trading partners, and that bilateral meetings would take place in Paris and Geneva in coming weeks.

Brazilian secretary of the Agriculture Defence Ministry, Ernie Marque, described the case as an "old and isolated occurrence". He said no other cases of BSE had ever been detected the country, with 25,000 laboratory tests conducted since 2004.

Guilherme Marques, director of Brazil's Department of Animal Health, pointed that the OIE still recognised Brazil as having a "negligible BSE risk".

According to the official OIE notification, Brazilian veterinary officials were originally called to check on the cow in December 2010, after it showed signs of limb stiffness, but the cow died before they arrived at the farm. The officials originally suspected rabies and sent off samples for laboratory analysis. The samples tested negative for rabies, so they were then tested for BSE, as is standard procedure in suspected neurological diseases.

The reported stated that a histopathological test returned a negative result for BSE, but the sample was then sent for analysis by the National Reference Laboratory, National Agricultural Laboratory (LANAGRO-PE) in Recife, where it tested positive for BSE on June 2012 by an immunohistochemical test. The sample was then sent to the UK laboratory, where further immunohistochemical testing confirmed the presence of BSE on 6 December 2012.

Brazilian authorities said the 18-month delay between the histopathological and immunohistochemical tests occurred because a combination of a work overload at its testing laboratory and OIE rules, which had led to the sample being classified as low priority for diagnosis.

However, US livestock group, R-CALF USA, claimed the time delay was unacceptable and demonstrated failures in the OIE system.

The group has written a letter to USDA Secretary, Tom Vilsack, to impose an immediate ban on imports of ruminants and ruminant products from Brazil.