SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazil’s agriculture ministry has confirmed three new cases of foot-and-mouth disease in the same region where the highly contagious disease turned up a week earlier.
Since the first outbreak surfaced on
Oct. 10, 32 countries restricted beef shipments from Brazil, home to the largest commercial cattle herd of 190 million head.
The country is the world’s largest beef exporter, with beef shipments worth more than $3.5 billion Cdn in trade revenues in the past 12 months.
“All these properties (that are within 25 kilometres of the original outbreak) are being attended by ministry officials,” said Jose Antonio Felicio, supervisor of the ministry’s offices in Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil’s biggest cattle producer.
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Despite the 580 head of cattle on the Vezozzo ranch in the Eldorado municipality that were slaughtered in mid-October, new cases of foot-and-mouth were confirmed in cattle on the 280-head Jangada ranch, also in Eldorado, on the border with Paraguay.
Health officials slaughtered the Jangada herd on Oct. 17.
Animals on two other smaller properties called Santo Antonio and Guaira in the nearby municipality of Japora also tested positive for the disease, the ministry said.
Before the cattle on the new farms are slaughtered, the ministry makes assessments of the herds’ values to pay restitution to the ranchers.
Although the disease is no threat to humans, it can devastate a country’s ranching industry. Foot-and-mouth disease is easily spread among cloven-hoofed animals causing blisters around the mouth and hoof, fever, weight loss and reproductive complications.
