Importing Brazilian Beef Brings Too Much Potential Risk

Importing Brazilian Beef Brings Too Much Potential Risk

The comment period is now closed on USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service proposal to allow fresh beef imports from 14 Brazilian states. Many throughout the beef industry were against this proposal because of the risk of potentially introducing foot and mouth disease into the United States.

 

National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Vice President of Government Affairs Colin Woodall said that NCBA did extensive research to understand the why behind this proposal and he shares some interesting findings

 

Woodall: “We went in and analyzed all the documents that were used by APHIS to formulate this rule. Unfortunately the majority of the documents given to use were in Portuguese with no translations, so we have to ask ourselves exactly how the government used those documents.”

 

NCBA has asked APHIS to give industry another 120 days to examine the information but also asked them to withdraw the proposal. Woodall shares more of what the dramatic impact of foot and mouth arriving on U.S. soil would be

 

Woodall: “Foot and mouth disease is highly contagious. And if we were to have it here in the United States — it would devastate us. We would expect most — if not all — of our international markets to dry up immediately. That would cost our industry probably cost about $5 billion on the bottom in - but could be even more. And then also we would have to consider the financial impact of de-population, the halting of cattle movement within the states, and the overall impact on our domestic herd and domestic producers. This would be crippling and we could have losses up to $50 billion.”

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