The U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) takes very seriously the responsibility to ensure the safety of meat, poultry, and processed egg products for American consumers. FSIS recently conducted a targeted, on-site equivalence verification audit of Brazil’s raw intact beef products to verify the implementation of corrective actions in response to several audits and technical discussions since FSIS suspended the export of raw intact beef from Brazil in 2017. FSIS uses a three-pronged approach to verify that a foreign country’s inspection system for imported meat, poultry, and processed egg products achieves an equivalent level of public health protection as the U.S. inspection system.
FSIS confirmed that Brazil has implemented the corrective actions and has determined that its food safety inspection system governing the production of raw intact beef is equivalent to that of the U.S. As a result, effective February 21, 2020, FSIS is lifting the suspension on raw intact beef products exported from Brazil to the U.S. Raw intact beef products from Brazil will be subject to re-inspection at U.S. points of entry by FSIS import inspectors as is required with meat, poultry, and processed egg products from other countries.
The reports for audits conducted by FSIS in June 2019 and January 2020 are available at https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/8f9c5e4c-2564-47f8-81af-22bac0cc0b4d/brazil-far-2020.pdf?MOD=AJPERES.
This statement was originally issued by FSIS on February 21 and is available here: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/newsroom/meetings/newsletters/constituent-updates/archive/2020/ConstUpdate022120
