By Roberto Samora and Isabel Teles
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil, the world’s largest chicken exporter, is currently investigating six potential outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza, known as bird flu, according to updated data on the Agriculture Ministry’s website.
Two of the ongoing investigations concern poultry raised on commercial farms and four refer to backyard flocks.
A suspected case was reported in the northern state of Tocantins, and the other in Santa Catarina, which neighbors Rio Grande do Sul, where the first commercial-farm outbreak was reported last week triggering trade bans.
“People are on high alert,” agriculture minister Carlos Favaro told TV reporters outside his ministry on Monday, referring to the cases under investigation. “Farmers, whether on commercial or subsistence farms, report it when they see a sick animal, and it’s good that it is that way.”
Favaro said that Brazil would be considered free of bird flu if no new cases of the disease were confirmed in a 28-day window after the initial outbreak.
That would not mean that exports would be restored immediately, but Brazil would be in a position to negotiate with buyers to relax restrictions triggered by exiting health protocols.
As well as last Friday’s confirmation of an outbreak of bird flu on a commercial farm in Montenegro, in Brazil’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, authorities also confirmed a case in a black-necked-swan in the town of Sapucaia do Sul, about 50 kilometers (31.07 miles) from Montenegro.
(Reporting by Isabel Teles and Roberto Samora; Writing by Ana Mano; Editing by Mark Porter, Kirsten Donovan)
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