The Beef with Brazilian Beef

Beef from Brazil may taste fine and have an attractive price, but the reasons to ban it from being imported into the European Union are beginning to mount. Despite the EU’s 176 percent tariff on Brazilian beef, cattle farmers in Ireland, Scotland,Wales, Italy and elsewhere say the imported meat is still so cheap that it threatens to put them out of business. Brazilian beef also poses numerous risks to European consumers —from the use of EU-banned hormones to traceability problems to bio-security lapses. Even though it has not eradicated foot and mouth disease, Brazil can still ship beef to Europe. European farmers whosecattle have been hit with the disease, however, face costly bans that have deprived them of millions of Euro in lost beef sales. Environmental protection and human rights are also at stake. To makeway for huge factory style cattle operations, rainforests in Brazil are being slashed and burned by slave labourers who live in shacks and reportedly have been chained to trees and shot. The dilemma has created a stand-off between members of the European Parliament who want Brazilian beef banned from the EU and the European Commission, which has acknowledged serious problems with Brazil’s meat production system but says a ban is premature and unjustified. Download the PDF file.

In June 2007, the Irish Farmers Association released a report outlining the many hygiene and veterinary problems associated with Brazilian beef. Brazil Uncovered was based on visits several IFA staffers made to 42 Brazilian farms, including in-depth interviews and discussions at 15 of them. The farms ranged in size from 200-300 to 2,500 slaughtered animals per year.

None of the 15 farms studied in-depth had full traceability systems in place — and cattle at 11 of the farms had no identification tags at all. At seven farms, the IFA team found tags that had been cut from animals. The staffers saw cattle destined for export with split ears and holes in the ears, meaning identification tags had been removed to conceal the animals origin.

Without these identification tags, it cannot be known whether the animals came from the three Brazilian states with export bans due to foot and mouth disease, a highly contagious and sometimes fatal viral livestock illness that has struck parts of Latin America, Asia and Africa. Cattle also may be coming in from Paraguay, where the disease is rampant. Thus, cattle from disease-struck areas can move to disease-free areas, and the meat from these animals can eventually be exported to Europe.

The IFA team heard allegations of cattle being moved from Parana, which is banned from exporting beef to the EU, to Rio Grande do Sul, which does not have a ban. The team saw no evidence of cattle being subject to bio-security screening when moved from export-ban states to non-export-ban states, or across the Brazil-Paraguay border.

Trade statistics support the IFA’s claim that movement of cattle from restricted to unrestricted areas is “widespread.” Even though beef exports are now banned from Brazilian states that once accounted for 60 percent of EU imports, total beef Brazilian exports to the EU have only fallen by 2 percent, the IFA report said.¹ Imports amounted to 330,000 tonnes in 2006.²

At one farm, the IFA team found growth hormones that have been banned in the EU. A bottle of “Synovex S” and a pump-action syringe gun was found at the farm’s cattle-handling facilities. Controls of these and other restricted substances are “non-existent,” according to the IFA report. A wide range of antibiotics are available over-the-counter in farm supply stores, and the sale and use of insecticides is “widespread,” the report said.
“By accepting Brazilian beef imports, which clearly fail to meet European standards, the EU Commission are failing in their duty to European consumers and undermining European producers,” the IFA report concludes.³
André Bouchut, Secretaire General of the French farmers union Confédération Paysanne, warned of the economic impacts Brazilian beef is having in Europe. “If Brazil continues to export beef according to its aspirations, 30,000 farmers in Europe will lose their livelihoods. While Brazil boasts about the power of its exports, European farmers and Europe‚ agricultural potential are becoming weaker.”