The recent outbreak of bird flu in Asia has brought new customers from all over the world to Brazil, which has become the world’s largest chicken exporter. Now, that country might be facing a serious health problem with their own poultry.
Brazilian sanitary authorities have quarantined 107 chicken farms in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul after 6,000 chicken died last week from a mysterious respiratory disease.
The farms affected are in the municipality of Jaraguari, 20 miles from Campo Grande, the state capital, which is about 750 miles from São Paulo.
The Iagro (Agência Estadual de Defesa Animal e Vegetal – State Agency for Animal and Vegetal Defense) also ordered the slaughter of 17,000 chickens just in case, since they don’t seem to know what illness has hit the animals.
Samples of the affected chicken entrails were sent yesterday for analysis to the Agriculture Ministry’s lab in Campinas, São Paulo state. Federal authorities hope to receive results of the test today.
Gladys Espíndola Raquel, a manager at Iagro’s Animal Sanitary Defense, said that the measures taken by her department (quarantine of farms and slaughter of chickens) should be enough to prevent the mysterious disease from spreading.
“Several illnesses have similar symptoms and because of that we cannot guarantee which one of them showed up in this area,” she informed.
Raquel refused to answer whether the Brazilian disease had similar symptoms to the Asian bird flu, which ended up killing 54 people in Asia.
Chicken production in Brazil grew 8% in 2004 and exports increased by 26%, in part due to the bird flu outbreak in Asian countries.
In all quarantined farms, the vehicles were fumigated in order to prevent the spread of the disease in the area of Jaraguari. According to Iagro, their main concern at the moment is to avoid that the illness reaches other farms.
Trying to avoid panic in the domestic and foreign market, Iagro issued a note in which it says: “What’s happening in Jaraguari are just routine actions.”
