Brazil farmers, officials step up controls where bird flu was found on commercial farm
By Debora Ely
MONTENEGRO, Brazil (Reuters) -Officials and chicken farmers in Brazil have stepped up sanitary controls close to where the country's first case of avian influenza was found on a commercial farm, while racing to track the virus to stop its spread.
Brazil is the world's largest chicken exporter. News on Friday of the first case of highly pathogenic avian influenza found on a commercial farm in Montenegro, in Rio Grande do Sul state, triggered trade bans for Brazilian chicken by China and the European Union, as well as fellow Latin American countries Mexico and Argentina, among others.
Brazilian authorities at the state and federal level have scrambled to prevent bird flu from spreading. On Saturday, the government of Minas Gerais state said it destroyed 450 metric tons of eggs from Rio Grande do Sul.
Eggs from the affected farm were traced to locations in Minas Gerais, Parana and Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's agriculture ministry said, adding they would be destroyed.
Some 1.7 million eggs have been destroyed in Rio Grande do Sul, according to the state's department of agriculture.
"We don't know what's going to happen, if there's going to be stagnation, if we're going to keep producing - we don't know anything," said Celso Zweibricker, 65, a chicken farmer in Montenegro.
With 76,000 birds to protect, Zweibricker stepped up sanitary controls, denying access to visitors and insisting that chicken-feed deliverers could only enter the site with clean boots.
"We don't want anyone to come in," Zweibricker said.
The outbreak of highly infectious bird flu that started in 2022 has devastated production of chicken and eggs in the United States, leading to the culling of millions of poultry birds, and has spread to dairy farms across the U.S.
On Saturday, teams from Vibra Foods, a Brazilian operation backed by Tyson Foods which runs the farm where bird flu was detected, buried waste that had first been incinerated to prevent the spread of the virus.
The virus killed around 15,000 birds and the farm culled an additional 2,000. Vibra Foods did not respond to requests for comment.
Brazil's agriculture ministry and Rio Grande do Sul's department of agriculture created a task force in Montenegro to prevent the virus spreading, with officials visiting 524 properties within a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius of the farm where the first case was found.
Teams from the ministry and state department, with support from the military police, will set up a total of seven disinfection barriers close to the farm, washing passing vehicles with water and disinfectant, the department of agriculture in Rio Grande do Sul said.
On Saturday, a sample taken from a duck on a non-commercial farm suspected of having bird flu was collected and sent for testing, Rosane Collares, director of animal health surveillance and defense for the Rio Grande do Sul's department of agriculture, told Reuters.
"Our goal is to eliminate this outbreak and return to the previous condition as quickly as possible," Collares said.
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