Brazil Suspends Beef Exports to China After Finding Mad-Cow Disease

SÃO PAULO—Brazil, the world’s largest beef exporter, halted shipments of meat to China after confirming a case of mad-cow disease, raising concerns among farmers over a drawn-out beef ban from the country’s biggest trading partner.

Brazil’s agricultural ministry said late Wednesday it had notified the World Organization for Animal Health and sent samples for testing in Canada after detecting a case of the disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, at a small farm in the Amazonian state of Pará.

As part of a 2015 bilateral agreement with China, Brazil is obliged to automatically suspend shipments of beef to China upon detection of the disease. Brazil’s agricultural ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether shipments to other countries, including the U.S., would also be halted.

In 2021, two cases of mad-cow disease forced Brazil to suspend beef exports to China, the biggest buyer of Brazilian meat, for some three months, dealing a heavy blow to the country’s farmers.

Pará’s state government said it detected the case at a farm with some 160 cattle, saying the symptoms suggested it was a so-called atypical case of the disease, which occurs spontaneously in older cows and is less dangerous, rather than the classic type of infection usually caused by contaminated cattle feed

The cases detected two years ago were also the atypical kind, according to industry group Abrafrigo, but Beijing still maintained the monthslong embargo as Brazilian officials worked to convince China that the country’s meat was safe.

Brazilian beef exports had already come under scrutiny in 2017 when police accused inspectors in the Latin American country of taking bribes to allow sales of rotten and salmonella-infested meats, prompting China and other countries to cut imports.