The U.S. is halting imports of fresh beef from Brazil due to increasing concerns of the health risks in the meat, the Department of Agriculture announced Thursday.
Officials have been inspecting 100 percent of the meat products imported from Brazil since March, and blocked about 1.9 million pounds, or 11 percent of the Brazilian fresh beef imports from entering the U.S. market. That’s the equivalent of 5 million 6 oz burgers if all the rejected meat went into ground beef. For perspective, McDonald’s sells about 6.5 million hamburgers every day.
An 11 percent rejection rate is substantially higher than other agricultural products, the USDA said, noting that none of the rejected meat made it into the U.S. market.
“Ensuring the safety of our nation’s food supply is one of our critical missions, and it’s one we undertake with great seriousness,” Sonny Perdue, secretary of agriculture, said in a statement. “Although international trade is an important part of what we do at USDA, and Brazil has long been one of our partners, my first priority is to protect American consumers. That’s what we’ve done by halting the import of Brazilian fresh beef.”
China, Egypt and several countries in Europe have also reduced imports of Brazilian beef since March, Reuters reports.
U.S. authorities started investigating Brazilian beef after allegations that two of the country’s meat packers were bribing food inspectors and politicians to overlook unsanitary practices. The investigation, dubbed “Operation Weak Flesh,” accused more than 100 people, mainly food inspectors, of falsifying documents and allowing rancid meat to be exported.
“We’ve never seen a scandal like this in the sector … It’s horrifying,” Alex Silva, an analyst at Scot Consultoria, told Reuters. “This stains the entire system that Brazil has spent years building.”
Brazil exported a total $5.5 billion of beef in 2016, and sold more than $75 million worth of beef products to the U.S. between January and April this year, according to recent agriculture data.
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