Brazil’s bird flu outbreak brings to an end a remarkably long period in which Brazil stood out as the only major poultry producing country to be free of the disease.
Meat production, including poultry, is a hugely important part of the Brazilian economy. Brazil is the world’s second largest poultry producer, after the United States, but it is the biggest exporter of poultry meat.
As bird flu spread around the world over the past few years, carried by wild birds which know no boundaries, Brazil remained miraculously immune.
Bird flu ravaged poultry flocks across Europe, then Canada and the United States, and then it started spreading down South America. Chile and Argentina were infected, and so were Brazil’s neighbours Bolivia and Colombia.
Despite reported outbreaks of bird flu in wild birds in Brazil, and in seals and sea lions along its coast, Brazilian commercial poultry flocks were unaffected. Until last week, when Brazil notified world health authorities of an outbreak at a production facility in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.
Whether it remains confined to that facility, or spreads further as it has done in other countries, remains to be seen.
“The spread of the virus in Europe and the United States shows that culling is proving ineffective in stamping out any outbreak. That is why vaccination is increasingly being seen as an essential tool in efforts to prevent disastrous outbreaks such as South Africa experienced in 2023,” the SA Poultry Association (SAPA) noted in its statement on the Brazilian bird flu outbreak.
