Another blow to the image of Brazilian beef
Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry has suspended beef exports to China after detecting a case of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), in Mato Grosso. The suspension is temporary and follows procedure foreseen in a 2015 sanitary accord between Brazil and China. The Brazilian government said the animal was 17 years old, had already been slaughtered, and products obtained from it were taken from the human food chain to “no risk to humans.”
While considered atypical and not enough to change Brazil’s status as an area of “insignificant” risk for the disease, the case is a new blow to the image of Brazilian beef. In recent years, police operations unveiled corruption schemes that tampered with sanitary controls, and Brazil’s ability to match quantity (it is the world’s largest beef exporter) with quality has been called into question by competitors.
Working in favor of Brazilian exporters are China’s own sanitary issues. The country experiences a swine fever outbreak that could reduce its pork production by 30%. And Chinese households are expected to replace pork with beef. In 2017, China imported USD 939m in beef from Brazil—an amount...