Amid investigations of suspected cases of avian flu in the country, the Parliamentary Front of Agriculture (FPA) received, on Tuesday afternoon, the Minister of Agriculture, Carlos Fávaro. The minister defended the improvement of legislation with approval of new laws by Congress. He gave as an example two projects – which creates a national sanitary fund to indemnify producers and another that provides for extra time payment, through another fund, for public servants of the Ministry of Agriculture.
At the end of the meeting, the president of FPA, Deputy Pedro Lupion (PP-PR) talked with the Infomoney. He defended the changes in the legislation cited by the minister and said that the measures adopted so far are good, but the sector is not yet quiet. “We need to work with the Ministry of Agriculture’s budget issue to be able to counteract this problem,” he added.
Lupion also demonstrated support for the project that flexes environmental licensing and is about to be approved in the Senate.
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Check out the main excerpts of the interview given by Pedro Lupion:
Infomoney – Is the parliamentary front of agriculture is quiet with the measures that the Ministry of Agriculture is taking?
Pedro Lupion – The measures are blunt, good measures, but tranquility we don’t have. It is something that gives us a lot of concern, it is a theme that can very strongly impact the entire Brazilian productive sector. I am from Paraná, so I need to have this constant concern because more than 40% of the meat is produced there. So we support the measures, understand that the measures are extremely strong, blunt, follow all the protocols required worldwide from the markets where we sell, who welcomed these measures. We are supporting obviously, but concern always exists.
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IM – What do you understand that you still need to be done? Do you need, for example, financial compensation for losses?
PL – Financial compensation is something we have to talk about later. At the moment, we need to mitigate any kind of spread of it. That is, any emergence of new focuses. And that we can contain this problem specifically in Rio Grande do Sul, in Montenegro, and prevent us from having contagion in other places.
IM- Do you think it will hurt the image of Brazil?
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PL – Brazil is one of the few countries, in fact we are the third in the world in animal protein, the only one of the great ones that sells to the whole world that had no focus. I am not minimizing the problem, but our great competitors have much more serious health problems than us. So, I think we are on the right way, we are working on this direction and I don’t see much damage.
IM – What can the House and Senate vote to mitigate problems?
PL – We will now vote for the issue of creating a sanitary occurrence fund (…) we will work with the issue of overtime payment for agricultural defense inspectors – this is super important. We did the work of the self -control of agricultural activities, something that also bureaucracy and simplifies the sector to be able to have more speed in care. We need to work with the Ministry of Agriculture’s budget issue to be able to counteract this whole problem, so we have a lot of work there next week to solve.
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IM – Do you have the support of the presidents of the two houses to give priority to these votes?
PL – No doubt this is responsibility with the country. It is a sector that represents almost 30% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), has to have this respect, this concern and this priority. We will work in this regard.
IM – Regarding environmental licensing, which is about to be voted in the Senate, what is your opinion?
PL – I think it is an extremely important advance for us to be able to overcome bureaucratic bottlenecks, which we face mainly in the major infrastructure works in the country. It is not just a matter of Agro, it is a matter of infrastructure in the country effectively -highways, railways, huge electricity projects, ports, airports -which today suffer greatly for environmental bureaucracy, especially for these licenses and that the law is not flexing absolutely nothing. It is creating quieter ways to make these licenses and be able to meet the demands of a country that grows so fast, so that it needs the active productive sector to hold the economy.
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