|
The northern Brazilian state of Acre was recognized by the World Organization of Animal Health (OIE) as a zone free of foot and mouth disease through vaccination.
This is the 16th unit of the Brazilian federation to obtain this status. Acre was already considered a foot and mouth free zone through vaccination by the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply.
The OIE reached this decision during its annual session, which ended at the end of last week, in Paris.
With this, the state of Acre can now sell any kind of beef and live animals on the foreign market. Before recognition, the state could only sell canned, boneless and matured beef outside the country.
With a cattle heard of 1.9 million heads of cattle and slaugter of around 300,000 animals a year, the state has revenues of around US$ 125 million with the sale of live animals to slaughterhouses.
Acre is the second state in the northern region of Brazil to obtain recognition as a foot and mouth free zone through vaccination. The first was Rondônia, in 2003.
Apart from opening a gateway to the foreign market for beef produced in the state, the new status should also bring investment to livestock farming in the state.
The state's herd is the so-called "green cattle", which feeds on pastures and is bred free, unconfined.
During the OIE session, which brought together representatives from 160 countries last week, the cities of Guajará and Boca do Acre, in the state of Amazonas, also in the north of the country, were recognized as foot and mouth free zones through vaccination.
The Brazilian target is to have the entire territory recognized as a foot and mouth free zone through vaccination by the end of 2006.
The number of vaccines applied against the disease should reach 370 million this year. Brazil currently has annual revenues of US$ 2.5 billion with the export of cattle beef.
Anba
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.