MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

More countries ban Argentine animal produce

While Argentine animal health officials desperately try to find the origin of the foot and mouth disease outbreak in the northeastern province of Corrientes, the list of countries banning beef and other animal produce imports from Argentina keeps growing.

Colombia was the latest to suspend all imports for six months, following similar decisions from Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, but Argentina's eyes are set on Russia which last year absorbed 30% of all the country's beef exports and until Thursday had not reacted to the FAM news.

But in the midst of the sanitary emergency, there was an ironic side to the outbreak given the current confrontation between cattle ranchers and the beef industry with the Argentine government over cattle and meat prices.

The president of the Argentine Rural Society, the most influential farmers lobby in the country, Luciano Miguens forecasted that the Corrientes FAM outbreak would cause great losses to Argentina because of the canceling of overseas sales, but the "good news is that we'll have cheap meat".

Miguens and representatives from other farmers associations only a couple of weeks ago refused to sign an agreement with the President Kirchner administration accepting lower prices for live cattle in an attempt by the Argentine government to bring down consumer prices and the inflation rate, a consensual tool which has worked with some industries.

With the reappearance of FAM the creation of the Beef export Registry (to slow down exports) "will make no sense", said Mr. Miguens, adding that much harm has already been done. "Many beef orders were ready to be shipped but because of the Registry paperwork have been delayed and will now unfortunately have to remain and be consumed in Argentina".

"The consequences of the FAM outbreak can be very serious and comes as a surprise for of us since we had a good sanitary condition and prevention tasks were working smoothly", emphasized Mr. Miguens.

Osvaldo Benitez Meabe, president of the Corrientes Cattle breeders association described the situation as "dramatic" since "the province has 4.9 million head of cattle and the FAM outbreak will have an impact in the whole economy". He added that he personally saw the vaccination certificate of the farm where the outbreak occurred and "every thing was in due form".

Argentine animal health officials from SENASA, are working on two clues to determine the origin of the FAM outbreak, either cattle was introduced (smuggled) to the country without having been vaccinated or the cold storage conditions of the vaccines failed in Corrientes.

Jorge Amaya, SENASA president underlined that "besides this particular case, the office has done a very good job in the vaccination campaign".

Jose Antonio Romero Brisco manager of the farm with the outbreak said all the paperwork was in order and "SENASA did the vaccination". He added that he was not only concerned about the overall costs for Corrientes province and the beef industry, "but who's going to pay for the 70 head of cattle sacrificed and any other that must also be terminated?"

However Mr. Amaya said that the "first responsibility" belongs to the farmer, not SENASA. "We're not blaming anybody about the FAM outbreak, we're going to find out where the mistake is or was committed, but I can assure that our animal health office job was done correctly taking into account all precautions".

Romero Brisco admitted that the farm is next to the Parana river, across from Paraguay, but it's very wide at that point and "it's very difficult to smuggle cattle across, if that is one of the options analyzed. Besides we haven't seen any suspicious movements across the river or from any of the two border countries".

Argentina suffered a similar outbreak of foot and mouth in 2001 and only a couple of years ago recovered the free of FAM with vaccination condition which enables the country to export to most world markets. Argentine meat exports in 2005 reached 1.4 billion US dollars.