JBS S.A. decided to suspend operations in 33 out of 36 beef slaughter
plants in Brazil for three days beginning Thursday, after more than a
dozen countries temporarily banned Brazilian meat imports this week, the
company announced on Thursday.“In the next week, the company will
operate all its units with a reduction of 35 percent in production
capacity,” JBS added in a statement.The company aims to adjust
production to demand as a consequence of the embargoes imposed by
importers, after the country's Federal Police announced an operation to
dismantle an alleged bribery scheme involving 33 federal sanitary
inspectors and 21 meat processing plants.JBS added that “it is committed
to maintaining the employment of its 125,000 employees throughout
Brazil.”Since the investigations were announced last Friday, Brazil's
daily meat exports fell to $74,000 on Tuesday from an average of $63
million before the probe was made public.China, Hong Kong, Egypt and
Chile alone, which are among countries that temporarily banned purchases
from Brazil, account for 53 percent of the country's total beef
exports, according to data compiled by BTG Pactual bank, released in a
report on Thursday.The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service decided
to increase its testing on all shipments of raw beef and ready-to-eat
products from Brazil, even though none of the slaughter or processing
facilities implicated in the investigation have shipped products to the
U.S.Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) on Wednesday urged the USDA to
suspend all imports of Brazilian meat until agency officials can
guarantee the products are not adulterated, mislabeled or expired. On
Tuesday, Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.) announced legislation to
temporarily ban importation of Brazilian beef for 120 days, which would
give time for the USDA to investigate potential food safety threats.The
Brazilian government and meat industry associations have been trying to
publicly assure importers and local consumers that Brazil's federal
sanitary inspection system is rigid, and that the investigations do not
question quality of the meat.“The investigation is not about the quality
of the products, the investigation is about the conduct of people,”
Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi said in a conference call with foreign
journalists posted on Facebook Thursday.Brazil's Federal Police said in
a joint statement with the Ministry of Agriculture that the Operation
Weak Flesh finds punctual irregularities in the federal sanitary
inspection, which relate “directly to deviations of professional conduct
practiced by some servers and do not represent a generalized
malfunction of the Brazilian sanitary system.”The Brazilian poultry and
pork industry association ABPA said on Thursday that the events
investigated by the Federal Police were isolated, and “the idea of
systemic problems in the quality of Brazilian meat is absolutely
wrong.”Brazil's Minister of Agriculture Maggi visited BRF's processing
plant in Rio Verde (Goiás state) on Thursday with two TV crews from
China, as part of the government's efforts to guarantee the quality of
Brazilian meat and sanitary procedures.
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