Mercosur Negotiation: Where does the chicken meat in your sandwich come from?

Mercosur Negotiation: Where does the chicken meat in your sandwich come from?

Date published:  25 March 2018

The Mercosur negotiations are on their highest and one of the topics in the negotiation is a larger quota for exports of poultry meat from mainly Brazil to the EU.

The import of meat from 3rd countries to EU was in 2016

  • 895.000 T poultry meat (500.000 T of these came from Brazil)
  • 309.000 T beef
  • 206.000 T sheep meat and
  • 19.000 T pork

895.000 T of poultry meat imported from 3rd countries! Another way of putting it: 25 % of the poultry breast meat consumed in the EU is coming from 3rd countries … so you might ask yourself … and the retailer … where the chicken meat in the sandwich you buy for lunch today is coming from?

There are 300.000 people working in the EU poultry meat sector today. For every chicken breast we import from 3rd countries – one chicken less must be produced in EU, which puts EU jobs in danger.

From the consumer perspective it is almost impossible to understand how the EU Commission can think of granting additional quantities to Brazil, following the recent fraud scandal in the country.

Due to this scandal, the EU Commission has conducted audits and carried out tests on Brazilian poultry meat arriving in the EU.

  • Since 1st January 2017 the EU Border agents has rejected 275 Brazilian meat consignments because of salmonella contamination in poultry meat.
  • The EU Commission has published a report on the audit they have conducted in May 2017 in Brazil, following the fraud scandal. The results of this report clearly highlight critical deficiencies from Brazilian producers to comply with the high EU standards. For example, the auditors highlighted that no procedures were implemented to stop companies reshipping meat consignments that had been rejected at European ports.

The poultry meat producers in EU must comply with very high standards on animal welfare, food safety and environmental protection. The EU Poultry Meat sector is proud of complying with these high “Farm to Fork” standards, because it ensures the EU consumers products of the highest quality. Unfortunately, countries outside the EU do not have the same extensive legislation.

The EU poultry meat sector is committed to keep EU consumer confidence in poultry products. Therefore, it is impossible to accept any additional concessions of poultry meat in the Mercosur free-trade agreement negotiation, especially since recent food fraud has highlighted the critical deficiencies from Brazilian producers to comply with the high EU standards.