Brazil's cross-border plan to eradicate foot-and-mouth

DESPITE being locked out of 56 per cent of the world’s beef importing counties because of foot-and-mouth disease – including the lucrative markets of South Korea and Japan – Brazil still accounts for 32 per cent of the world’s beef export.  

JBS-Swift the Brazilian beef packer, recently acquired National Beef and Smithfield Group’s beef division in the United States, along with the Tasman Meat Group in Australia. This makes them the world’s largest beef producer, handling 10 per cent of the cattle slaughtered in the world.  

However, Brazil, unlike Australia or New Zealand, is not protected by coastline. It shares land borders with 10 different countries and viruses do not respect land borders – this has been the Achilles heel of Brazil in regard to foot-and-mouth.

Brazil is sending veterinary officers to improve the sanitary status of its neighbours, in an attempt to eradicate the foot-and-mouth problem at its source and is donating vaccinations and technology in a giant project that it hopes will eventually clear the entire South American continent of the disease within seven years.  

In a bid to open up new and lucrative markets, work is under way in building roads to connect Brazil with Pacific ports.

At present, all beef leaves the country via the Atlantic ports on the east coast of the country, making shipping costs to Asia uncompetitive. The new route will be from the west coast of neighbouring Chile.  

Brazil has 394 million hectares of farm land available for beef production and has no need to cut down any more trees. Currently, only 68 million hectares are being used to produce grass fed beef cattle and feedlots are now coming into fashion. 

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