Mexico Eases Bird Flu Ban on U.S. Poultry Imports

Mexico eased its ban on many U.S. poultry products on Monday, just two weeks after it was imposed when highly contagious bird flu was found in Texas.

Mexico eased its ban on many U.S. poultry products on Monday, just two weeks after it was imposed when highly contagious bird flu was found in Texas. Mexico will allow imports of chicken and turkey pastes and deboned turkey thigh from most U.S. states, Mexico’s agriculture ministry said in a statement. “The agriculture ministry has decided to reestablish under strict sanitary measures the trade in primary material chicken and turkey from the United States destined for thermic processing,” the government said in a statement. However, still banned are pieces of turkey, turkey thigh on the bone, turkey leg and breast on and off the bone and chicken pieces on and off the bone. Javier Trujillo, the ministry’s agricultural health chief, told Reuters the measure was applied as of Monday. Mexico is the fourth-largest importer of U.S. poultry, buying $93 million worth of chicken and related products from its northern neighbor in 2003. The easing of the ban does not apply to 10 U.S. states where bird flu has been present for an extended period, Trujillo said. The government on Monday said it had added Maryland to that blacklist. Officials in Maryland said on Saturday that a case of bird flu had been discovered on a poultry farm in that state. Maryland is one of five U.S. states to be affected by the disease this year. Mexico closed its borders in 2002 to poultry imports from North Carolina, Maine, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Texas, California and Connecticut due to bird flu. Imports from Delaware and New Jersey were banned later. But on Feb. 24, the Mexican government slapped a ban on poultry imports from all U.S. states after bird flu was discovered in the Texas chicken flock. The strain of the disease discovered in Texas was the stronger of two scientific categories of avian bird flu, but it is not as deadly as the strain devastating Asian poultry. It was the first U.S. outbreak in 20 years of a serious form of the virus that can kill large numbers of poultry. Jose Angel del Valle, director general of animal health for the Mexican agriculture ministry, told Reuters on Monday that poultry products imported by land over Texas would need proof they were not stored in the state at any point. He said poultry coming in under the relaxed ban would have to be certified as being free of bird flu and that all imports would be strictly monitored, with the destination of every pound of foreign chicken fully accounted for. “Any infraction of this will result in (a company’s) loss of eligibility to export,” to Mexico, Trujillo said. Mexico, linked with the United States and Canada in the North American Free Trade Agreement, last week announced it would reopen its borders to most U.S. beef imports that had been banned for 10 weeks due to the mad cow scare. (Source: Reuters Health, March 2004)