Brazil not testing cows for bird flu despite dairy cases in US
PARIS, May 27 (Reuters) - Brazil has not yet tested cows for bird flu, despite hundreds of cases in the dairy herd in the U.S., because it is focusing on poultry outbreaks after its first confirmed case on a farm this month, the country's chief veterinarian said on Tuesday.
Brazil, the world's largest chicken exporter, confirmed its first outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, on a poultry farm earlier this month, prompting bans from several major importers.
Bird flu has led to the culling of hundreds of millions of poultry around the globe in the past years and affected a large number of mammals, including more than a thousand dairy cows in the United States, raising concerns it could mutate into a form transmissible between humans.
"For the moment we are taking care of the poultry industry," Brazil's Chief Veterinary Officer Marcelo Mota told Reuters on the sidelines of the general session of the World Organisation for Animal Health in Paris.
The cattle industry is not very big in the region and Brazil mainly breeds cows for meat, not dairy, which has proven to be more vulnerable to the virus, Mota said.
"The management of the herd is different and so it's also part of our decisions at this moment not to consider the situation as a first priority," Mota said.
"We don't want to raise the concerns where we don't have a problem," he added.
Strong biosecurity in the past two decades and concentration along the production chain were the main reasons why Brazil did not report any bird flu outbreak on a farm before, he said.
"We just realized this is a challenge for life," he said.
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