MONTENEGRO, Rio Grande do Sul (Reuters) – Authorities and chickens creators intensified sanitary controls in the region where Brazil’s first avian flu case was registered in a commercial farm while running to track the virus and prevents dissemination.
Brazil is the largest chicken exporter in the world. The news, on Friday, of the first case of high pathogenicity avian flu, triggered the ban on Brazilian chin trade by China and the European Union, as well as by Mexico and Argentina, among others.
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Brazilian authorities at the state and federal levels strive to avoid the dissemination of aviary flu. On Saturday, the government of Minas Gerais said it destroyed 450 tons of eggs in Rio Grande do Sul.
The eggs of the affected farm were tracked to places in Minas Gerais, Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul, the Ministry of Agriculture said, adding that they would be destroyed.
About 1.7 million eggs were destroyed in Rio Grande do Sul, according to the State Department of Agriculture.
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“We don’t know what will happen, if it’s going to be a locked, if we will continue to create. We don’t know anything,” said Celso Zweibricker, 65, creator of chickens in Montenegro.
With 76,000 birds to protect, Zweibricker intensified sanitary controls, denying access to visitors and insisting that chickens could only enter the site with clean boots.
“Before, we already took care not to let the people come in. Now, with this news, even more. We don’t want anyone to come in,” said Zweibricker.
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The highly infectious aviary outbreak that began in 2022 devastated the production of chickens and eggs in the United States, leading to the slaughter of millions of birds, and spread to dairy farms across the country.
On Saturday, teams from Vibra Foods, a Brazilian operation supported by Tyson Foods that manages the farm where the aviary flu was detected, buried waste that had been incinerated to prevent the spread of the virus.
The infection killed about 15,000 birds and the farm slaughtered another 2,000. Vibra Foods did not respond to requests for comments.
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The Ministry of Agriculture and the Rio Grande do Sul Secretariat of Agriculture have created a task force in Montenegro to prevent the spread of the virus, with employees visiting 524 properties within 10 kilometers from the farm where the first case was found.
Teams from the Ministry and the State Secretariat, with the support of the Military Police, will set up a total of seven disinfection barriers near the farm, washing the vehicles that pass with water and disinfectant, the Secretariat of Agriculture of Rio Grande do Sul said.
On Saturday, a sample taken from a duck on a non -commercial farm suspected of having avian flu was collected and sent for testing, said Rosane Collares, director of Animal Sanitary Sanitary Defense of the Rio Grande do Sul Secretariat of Agriculture, to Reuters.
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“We are intended to crash this focus and return to the previous condition as soon as possible,” said Collares.
