Brazilian meat plants lose court case against EU import ban

BRUSSELS, July 8 (Xinhua) -- The General Court of the European Union (EU) on Wednesday dismissed a case filed by two Brazilian meat producers who cried foul over the 2018 decision by the European Commission not to allow their products to be imported into the EU for public health reasons.

The court said that the European Commission was right because it was "entitled to respond to concrete suspicions of fraud relating to the certification of products" and because "the Brazilian authorities had not provided ... the requisite guarantees concerning compliance with public health rules."

The action was brought by BRF SA and SHB Comercio e Industria de Alimentos SA, which form part of the group called BRF Capital, one of the world's largest producers and distributors of meat and meat products. Approximately 38 percent of the total imports of poultry meat from Brazil into the EU market for 2017 were exported by that group through BRF and SHB.

Checks had also revealed the presence of salmonella in the companies' poultry meat and poultry meat preparations and cases of fraud were detected in Brazil in March 2018 during the laboratory certification of the meat and meat products exported to the EU.

The EU General Court ruled that "the very nature of the fraud in question, concerning laboratory certification for meat, including poultry meat and meat products exported to the EU, is such as to call into question the reliability of the guarantees which the Brazilian authorities are supposed to provide."