Brazil slaughters 3,500 animals to control disease

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) -- Brazilian authorities have now slaughtered more than 3,500 animals and extended a hygiene inspection zone in a key ranching state to contain outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, officials said on Monday.

Brazil's southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, detected 28 cattle infected with the highly contagious viral sickness last month -- the first time that the disease had resurfaced in the region for almost seven years.

Following the discovery, Brazil's Agriculture Ministry announced a series of measures to contain and wipe out the virus -- including a quarantine area, curbs on animal movement and the slaughter of animals considered at risk from the disease.

"The slaughter is continuing as one of the sanitary measures recommended by the Agriculture Ministry and it's already exceeded 3,000 (animals)," said Tito Matos de Souza, the ministry's chief spokesman.

As of late Sunday, the overall kill in Rio Grande do Sul was reported at 3,635 animals, comprising 2,584 head of cattle, 869 pigs, 180 sheep and two goats.

Foot-and-mouth provokes high fevers and blisters in cloven-hoofed animals that are often a precursor to death. The disease can be contracted by cattle, pigs, sheep and goats but only very rarely by humans.

Authorities in the state, which borders both Argentina and Uruguay, said the hygiene inspection area where ministry teams are checking all animals has now been extended to the metropolitan area of the state capital Porto Alegre.

The central infection zone, which was immediately slapped into quarantine after the first outbreaks were discovered, is located around the town of Joia in the western part of Rio Grande do Sul near the Argentine border.

Movements of animals within the quarantine zone have been restricted to the minimum necessary and strict curbs have already been placed on movements outside the state of live animals or meat products to other parts of Brazil.

However, some farmers have recently protested against the enforced slaughter of some of their animals, which they say were not showing any symptoms of the disease, and have threatened to bar entry to the government inspection teams.

The Agriculture Ministry said local disgruntlement with the slaughter and the state government's program of compensation appeared to be minimal and would not hold up the strenuous efforts to stamp out foot-and-mouth in Brazil.

"What had been said is that we would have to isolate the state if small producers did not permit inspection teams to carry out the identification of diseased animals," de Souza said.

"But that resistance (from farmers) was more at the beginning (of the crisis), and so it would be an extreme measure," he added.

Other livestock producers in the state, a prime pig and cattle farming area, are campaigning hard for the government to allow the re-introduction of vaccination against foot-and-mouth -- a step which the Agriculture Ministry has ruled out.

Last week, the ministry said it would not reintroduce vaccination because this would cause unacceptable delays in the international recognition of its health status.

The government had hoped that Rio Grande do Sul and its northern neighbor Santa Catarina would win international recognition of being free of foot-and-mouth, without vaccination, next year.

The idea was that the two states, known as the Southern Livestock Circuit, would lead a national drive to raise beef exports and gain access to disease-wary markets such as the United States, South Korea and Japan -- which refuse to buy meat from countries whose herds may run the risk of infection.

Despite the recent re-emergence of the disease, Brazil's government says it is still committed to a complete eradication of foot-and-mouth in the country by 2005.

"The (infection) centers detected in Rio Grande do Sul will not compromise the timetable for the eradication program of foot-and-mouth," said Agriculture Minister Marcus Vinicius Pratini de Moraes in a statement on Monday.

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