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 Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and his Brazilian counterpart
Blairo Maggi met in Washington, D.C., on Monday to discuss the ban
that went into effect on June 22. The United States has said a high
percentage of beef shipments from Brazil did not pass safety checks.
In June, the United States blocked shipments of fresh Brazilian beef
and said it had found abscesses in the meat and signs of systemic
failure of inspections in meat from the world's largest beef
exporter.
In March, some Brazilian meatpackers were hit with a scandal
involving alleged bribery of health officials, which briefly shut
Brazil's protein exports out of major global markets from China to
Europe.
Brazilian cattle ranchers have said they believe the abscesses were
linked to foot-and-mouth vaccines used in Brazil, the only country
where foot-and-mouth disease can be found in cattle that can sell to
the United States because it uses vaccinations.
After the meeting, Brazil's Agriculture Ministry released a
recording of Maggi's remarks in which he said the United States
could lift a ban on imports of fresh Brazilian beef in 30 to 60 days
but the final decision would be made after analysis of information
presented by Brazil.
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Perdue said in a statement that Maggi had pressed for a timeline for
restoring imports of fresh Brazilian beef to the United States, but
he said any timeline would depend upon progress being made by
Brazil.
Brazil had been selling fresh beef to the United States since July
2016 when the countries signed an agreement ending 17 years of talks
about such imports.
Fresh beef shipments to the United States represent 3 percent of
Brazil's beef exports and were worth $58.1 million from January to
June.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington, Ana Mano in Sao Paulo
and Tom Polansek in Chicago; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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