By Dylan Robb
For two years beef imports from Brazil into the United States were banned a substantially higher percentage was rejected by inspectors in 2017. Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) says the South American country’s beef industry has made the necessary changes to allow imports to resume.
“We were waiting for this news for some time and today we were fortunate to receive it,” Brazilian Agriculture Minister Tereza Cristina Dias said on Twitter.
The import ban started one year after Brazil was allowed to ship beef to the U.S. in 2016. The following year, after repeated issues, FSIS established enhanced inspections. During that time, agents rejected 1.9 million pounds of Brazilian beef products because of concerns about impacts on “public health, sanitary conditions and animal health issues.” None of these lots made it to the market.
Those inspections started after a scandal revealed meat-packers bribed inspectors for favorable results.
Consumer advocacy groups think the import change is happening without the necessary evidence.
“After this new policy takes effect, consumers will be taking a gamble every time they eat beef in the United States. There will be no country-of-origin labeling requirements on Brazilian beef, so there will be no way to know if the hamburgers you eat for dinner contain beef from a country that has had a checkered food safety history,” said Tony Corbo, Senior Government Affairs Representative for Food & Water Action in an online statement.
And he may be onto something. A recent study finds a dangerous bacteria present in many meat producing facilities. Microbiologists sampled beef marked for export in the Brazilian State of San Mato Grasso, the region responsibility from most of the beef that will be exported. Nearly seventy percent of the twelve facilities sampled had at least one positive sample test.
Click here to see more...