Brazil: The magnitude of the impacts of mad cow will be determined by the duration of the embargo, uncertain and depends on the Chinese

With the confirmation by the Agricultural Defense Agency of Pará (Adepará) of a case of mad cow disease on a property in Marabá, the decision of the Ministry of Agriculture on Wednesday (Feb/22) was to suspend beef exports to China from 23/Feb. A bilateral agreement signed between Brazil and China in 2015 determines the need for a “self-embargo” in case of occurrence of this nature. The country also notified the case to the International Organization for Animal Health (OIE). It is important to remember that Brazil has already had occurrences of atypical mad cow on other occasions, the last two in 2019 and 2021. Atypical mad cow is a brain degenerative process that occurs spontaneously in old animals, which is much less worrying than the classic type, which Brazil never had and which is related to the ingestion of contaminated meat and bone meal. Consumption of meat and animal derivatives contaminated in the classic way can lead to the development of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease ...