Brazilian beef and the UK: why Europe’s food safety decisions matter again for Britain

When I consider the EU’s recent decision to effectively close its market to a range of Brazilian animal products, I see far more than another mere trade dispute. It brings together three increasingly interconnected issues: food safety, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the principle that imported food should meet standards equivalent to those demanded of EU and British farmers. I mention UK farmers as I believe the actions of the EU raise a very important and probably uncomfortable question for the British Government.

If products can no longer enter the EU because an exporting country can’t provide sufficient guarantees that they meet European requirements, should they still be permitted to enter the UK marketplace? I pose this question, I believe, at a rather timely point as the UK Government has committed to a new Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) agreement with the EU involving substantial realignment with European food-safety legislation.

What has the EU actually done?

The new EU requirements apply to imports of food-producing animals and animal products from all third countries. These rules cover commodities including beef, pork, poultry, milk, eggs, aquaculture products and honey. Importantly, the EU has not declared that Brazilian beef or poultry is inherently unsafe but rather it cannot give the necessary guarantees of compliance with the EU’s new requirements governing antimicrobial use.

The regulation states that countries exporting animals and animal products to the EU must demonstrate that antimicrobials have not been used to promote growth or increase yield. They must also demonstrate that certain antimicrobials reserved within the EU for treating important human infections have not been used in food-producing animals. These requirements have applied to EU producers since 2022 and, from September on, they apply to imports as well. Only third countries providing the necessary guarantees of compliance can export the affected animals and animal products to the EU. In the case of Brazil, compliance had not been provided.

Testing meat for antimicrobial residues is one important element of surveillance. Despite this, I was informed by a reliable source that the Brazilian labs who carried out this function for many years, to the necessary quality standards, had their contracts cancelled some time ago. Seemingly a cost-cutting measure that has backfired badly; however, I also hear that the Brazilians are falling far short of providing other essential information – ie, full records of how animals have been produced and reared throughout their life. This requires reliable farm records, animal identification, veterinary medicine records and full traceability.

Having national regulations is not the same as demonstrating that those regulations are being enforced.”

The problem is far bigger than antibiotics

There is a longer history behind European concerns over Brazilian food controls. I well remember the 2017 ‘Weak Flesh’ scandal which exposed serious irregularities involving Brazilian meat businesses and officials responsible for inspection. At its heart, this scandal was not just a food-safety failure: it was a governance failure involving corruption, bribery and organised criminal activity that compromised regulatory oversight. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) acknowledged that audits had identified shortcomings in Brazil’s national food-safety control systems.

Brazil subsequently made substantial improvements and a UK audit undertaken in 2022 concluded that Brazilian authorities had made significant progress in correcting the systemic failings. Of particular note, the UK auditors warned that changes in risk levels or additional demands placed on inspection staff could stretch available resources. The report also made recommendations concerning laboratory capability, proficiency testing, official controls and contingency planning. The warnings and advice given appear to have gone unheeded.

I am of the firm belief that this experience illustrates something increasingly important in global food trade: having national regulations is not the same as demonstrating that those regulations are being enforced.

Has Brazilian food control become too relaxed?

I think it unfair to claim that Brazil has abandoned national food-safety controls. Brazil is one of the world’s great agricultural exporters and possesses substantial scientific, regulatory and laboratory capability. The concern appears to be a widening gap between the assurance Brazil can currently provide for some supply chains and the increasingly stringent guarantees demanded by major export markets such as the EU. For a country producing food on Brazil’s enormous scale, this represents a formidable challenge.

Brazil’s regulations must be supported by sufficient trained inspectors, effective surveillance programmes, accredited laboratories, reliable animal identification, veterinary oversight, traceability and independent verification. The stakes for Brazil are huge. Agribusiness generates around $165 billion of exports annually and accounts for close to half of the country’s total exports. Continued access to high-value international food markets is an imperative, thus investment in its control programmes should also be considered an imperative.

Where food safety and politics meet

It would be naïve to pretend that the Brazilian issue exists in a political vacuum. This country’s agricultural exports sit at the centre of the long-running controversy surrounding EU-Mercosur trade. European farmers repeatedly question why they should comply with increasingly stringent environmental, animal-health and veterinary-medicine requirements while competing against imported food produced under different regulatory systems. If European farmers cannot use antimicrobials as growth promoters because of the global threat from AMR, it becomes increasingly difficult scientifically and politically to justify importing food produced under systems that cannot demonstrate equivalent restrictions.

Not surprisingly, the issue has now moved to Britain. The four UK farming unions jointly called on the UK Government to prohibit Brazilian products of animal origin until Brazil can demonstrate that products exported to Britain are being produced responsibly. They have also called for an in-country audit of Brazilian production and traceability systems, increased checks and randomised risk-based sampling. This is something I wholeheartedly support. UK farmers have put massive efforts into reducing the use of antibiotics for well over a decade and rightfully ask why we should accept imports produced under systems unable to demonstrate comparable requirements, which risks undermining those achievements.

If the UK restricts Brazilian beef because they cannot demonstrate production and assurance standards considered equivalent to those demanded from British farmers, should the same principle then be applied to food imported from every other country?

Another concern facing the UK farming sector is trade diversion. Brazil exported more than 92,000 tonnes of beef and beef products and 211,000 tonnes of poultry meat to the EU last year. With this market now closed, how much of this could come into Britain?

My own opinion is that I would support a temporary precautionary restriction on the relevant Brazilian animal products if Brazil cannot provide robust, independently verifiable guarantees equivalent to those now required by the EU.

There is yet another dimension to this debate that could ultimately prove decisive. Currently, the UK Government is negotiating a new SPS agreement with the EU to realign British food and agricultural regulations with EU requirements. Defra has stated that alignment will also affect imports from the rest of the world, with UK check rates aligning with those applied by the EU. And actually the government guidance goes further than this. It states that Great Britain (GB) is expected to align with the EU’s third-country import rules and that inspections of some rest-of-world imports will align with levels specified in EU legislation. Some goods that are not currently routinely inspected when entering GB could therefore become subject to inspection once the agreement is implemented and the FSA is already preparing for implementation of the future agreement across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

For me, there’s a rather obvious question to answer: if Britain is moving quickly towards EU food-safety standards, what would be the logic of maintaining markedly different requirements for Brazilian imports in the meantime?

Is Brazilian beef about to open a regulatory Pandora’s box?

With a wider-angle lens view I can see an even bigger question lurking behind this dispute. If the UK restricts Brazilian beef because they cannot demonstrate production and assurance standards considered equivalent to those demanded from British farmers, should the same principle then be applied to food imported from every other country?

Products entering Britain can originate from production systems that markedly differ (and not for the better) from UK standards – not only in food safety and veterinary medicine use, but also in areas such as animal welfare and environmental sustainability. The FSA itself has recognised the wider issue. Its research into imported food production standards notes that imported products may differ from domestically produced food in areas including those that I mentioned. It also found that existing trade agreements provide only limited information and metrics for comparing some of these production standards .

Once regulators establish that differences in production standards and the inability to demonstrate equivalent controls justify restricting one major food import, then farmers, consumers and Parliament should ask why comparable tests should not be applied systematically elsewhere. The four UK farming unions are already making precisely this wider argument. Alongside their demands concerning Brazil, they have also called for a UK framework of core production standards that apply equally to domestic and imported agrifood products, specifically to prevent British producers being undercut by food produced using methods prohibited in the UK. Again, this demand has my full support.

Today the question is whether Brazil can demonstrate adequate controls over antimicrobial use. Tomorrow the debate should concern use and misuse of pesticides, veterinary medicines, animal-welfare practices, environmental standards, deforestation and labour practices and other production practices in all food imported into the UK. In this era of globalised food chains, trust in home-produced as well as imported food must be underpinned by robust traceability alongside transparent inspection and testing programmes.