MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Foot and mouth meeting

Foot and mouth Mercosur experts and veterinary services are meeting this week in Paraguay to consider the situation in the area plus special reports from the Andean and Amazon regions.

The meeting follows Argentina's admittance that "there are strong suspicions of the existence of foot and mouth outbreaks", and the country's decision to unilaterally cancel beef exports to highly sensitive markets, i.e. Nafta and Chile, equivalent to 250 million US dollars annually.

Argentina simultaneously intervened the Food and Animal Sanitary System, SENASA, responsible for monitoring foot and mouth disease, and converted the Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food Ministry into a dependency of the Production Secretary, forcing the resignation of Mr. Berhongaray, and naming Victor Savanti as the new super Minister.

One of Mr. Savanti's first decisions was to fire the former chief of SENASA, and give the job to Héctor Salamanco, who was until then CEO of the Argentine Beef Industry, the main beef exporters association.

Argentina's procedure is similar to August last year when an outbreak of foot and mouth disease was reported in the Paraguayan border with smuggled cattle.

This time the outbreak apparently is located in the province of Buenos Aires and its origin, so far is unknown, although farmers associations insist that there are more outbreaks and that SENASA's former policy was "to systematically deny facts and cover up the situation".

Argentina was considered free of foot and mouth disease last May by the International Epizooties Office in Paris, but in August was forced to admit the Paraguayan border outbreak and isolate the area. Insistent claims since then indicate that many farmers decided to re vaccinate on their own to prevent the spread of the disease.

The meeting in Paraguay of regional experts is to set a real time monitoring system in the area, and hinterland, plus common rules and procedures to identify and isolate any future or potential foot and mouth outbreak.

The strains detected in Argentina, Paraguay and south of Brazil are completely different and milder than those ravaging European stock.