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You are > Home > IFA critical of ‘double standards’ on Brazilian beef
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Wednesday, July 21, 2010
IFA critical of ‘double standards’ on Brazilian beef
With the Brazilian Minister for Agriculture, Mr Wagner Rossi, holding meetings with EU Commission officials in Brussels, Mr James Gleeson, Vice-Chairman, IFA National Livestock Committee said the EU must bluntly tell Brazil that European consumers and producers are not prepared to tolerate double standards when it comes to beef imports.
Mr Gleeson said the EU Commission was too lenient with Brazil in its failure to meet essential EU standards in respect of traceability, food safety, animal health, disease and environmental controls.
Mr Gleeson went on to say there were numerous Food and Veterinary Office reports available to the EU, which highlighted the continuing failure of Brazil to meet EU standards.
In addition, he said the latest food safety issues on Brazilian beef in the US, involving residues leading to several product withdrawals should serve as a major warning again to the EU that practices and standards in Brazil were not up to an acceptable level.
With no improvement in the traceability and movement control systems in Brazil at a national level, Mr Gleeson said fresh beef imports from Brazil were placing the European livestock sector at an unnecessary and unacceptable risk, particularly in relation to the threat of foot and mouth disease.
He pointed out that animal health and food safety authorities around the world, notably in the USA and a number of other countries, were not prepared to take this risk and refuse to import fresh beef from Brazil.
Mr Gleeson said the EU Commission could no longer ignore the environmental damage from the destruction of the rainforest associated with increased beef exports from Brazil. He said the Commission’s policy in WTO and Mercosur to accept increased beef imports from Brazil was fundamentally flawed and in contradiction to their climate change policy.
Mr Gleeson said by accepting beef imports from Brazil, which failed to meet EU standards on all of the critical issues including environmental controls, the EU Commission was implicating the European Union in some of the worst environmental destruction taking place on the planet.
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