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Brazil threatens WTO action over BSE-based beef bans
Story Date: 12/27/2012
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Source: Bob Moser, MEATINGPLACE, 12/26/12
Brazil, the world'st largest beef exporter, will allow the six countries that have enacted bans on its beef this month until March to drop their restrictions, or Brazil will pursue action with the World Trade Organization, federal officials said Friday from Paris, according to Reuters.
Six countries have implemented total or partian bans on Brazilian beef imports since Dec. 7, after Brazil and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) reported details of a “non-classic” case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) with a 13-year-old dead cow from Parana state in 2010.
The Brazilian government and lead trade officials have reacted to the string of export market closures by launching a diplomatic offensive. Agricultural attachés have visited specific key markets manned with information on the case, and federal officials spoke last week (Dec. 19) to 25 diplomats in Geneva, Switzerland, about the BSE case and Brazil's sanitary standards for livestock care.
But federal officials and those from Brazil's lead beef trade association, Abiec, have reiterated during the process that restrictions against Brazilian beef are without merit when the OIE has maintained its “negligible risk” BSE grade for Brazil, the best grade possible, even after Dec. 7.
“March is the deadline,” Ênio Marques Pereira, secretary for animal and plant health in Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture, said Friday to Reuters following an OIE meeting. If beef export restrictions aren't resolved by March, Brazil will file complaints against those countries with the WTO.
For more stories, go to http://www.meatingplace.com/.
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