Brazil meat exporter to ban transgenic exports
Date: 16-Sep-02
Country: BRAZIL
"We are doing everything to ensure that the product is GE free, since it's banned in Brazil as well as in Europe, which is one of the most important markets for the company," said an official at Perdigao SA , Brazil's second largest meat exporter after Sadia SA .
The Perdigao official, who declined to be named, said that a transgenics laboratory at the a university in Minas Gerais state would analyze the company's food ingredients and products to ensure that they were GE free.
Perdigao SA is Brazil's second largest poultry and third largest pork exporter.
The GE control measures are due to be implemented by Dec. 1.
The import of genetically-modified seeds and their commercial cultivation is banned in Brazil. But GE soybean seeds have been smuggled into southern Brazil from Argentina and now account for at least 25 percent of the crop.
Perdigao buys large quantities of soy products which are mixed in poultry and pork feed.
Perdigao and Sadia account for 50 percent of Brazilian poultry exports which rose 10 percent in to 753,250 tonnes in the first half of 2002.
Sadia has also said it supported the ban on GE food exports.
Environmental campaigners welcomed Perdigao's move.
"It means that even if GE crops were approved, a large share of the (Brazilian) crop production would remain non-GE. This is great news for the vast majority of consumers both in Brazil and abroad, who want non-GE food," Greenpeace campaigner Mariana Paoli said in a statement.
