BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) — Brazil has banned agricultural imports from Argentine provinces with foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks. The ban applies to crops such as wheat, soybeans, corn and fruit.
Brazil’s agriculture department said the ban will cover all agricultural goods coming from within 25 kilometres of the provinces recently hit with the highly contagious disease that can devastate cattle, sheep and other ruminant herd industries.
Argentina has discovered 78 cases of foot-and-mouth since March 13. Approximately 5,000 cattle are thought to be infected.
The return of the virus has closed important export markets to Argentina’s $600 million (US) a year beef industry, such as the United States, Chile, Canada, Brazil and the European Union, which make up about 80 percent of Argentina’s export market.
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Brazil imported about seven million tonnes of wheat in 2000, 97 percent of which came from its southern neighbor and main Mercosur trade bloc partner.
Argentine farm goods coming from the infected provinces will only be allowed into Brazil if they carry a certificate stating the product is free of any risk of spreading the disease
Similar import bans were announced by Morocco, Tunisia and Hungary on grain exported from the European Union, which has its own outbreak.
Brazilian agriculture minister Pratini de Moraes said all of Brazil’s nearly 170 million head of cattle, the world’s largest herd, is free of the disease.
