010234 Canada May Lift Brazil Beef Ban

Ottawa - Canada said it would lift its week-old ban on Brazilian beef products immediately if Canadian inspectors dispatched to Brazil find the products safe from mad cow disease.

Meanwhile, top government officials across Canada insisted the ban is about health, not an escalation of an ongoing Canada-Brazil trade battle.

Brazil has threatened an all-out trade war if the ban is not lifted quickly. And in Canada, a press report quoted two unnamed scientists at the country's health department as saying the ban was motivated more by trade politics than by health fears.

Brazil exports only $5.5 million in beef products to Canada annually, but the ban is painful because the United States and Mexico, fellow members of the NAFTA trade pact, followed Canada's lead in blocking its beef products.

“This has everything to do with the safety of the Canadian food supply,” Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief told the House of Commons, adding later in comments to reporters: “I will not put the safety of food and the health of Canadians at risk.”

In Vancouver, British Columbia, Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew also dismissed accusations that Canada had imposed the ban to pressure Brazil in their trade fight over aircraft subsidies.

“Health Canada has recommended we do that ban for strictly health reasons. It has nothing to do with trade,” Pettigrew heatedly told reporters on Friday.

Canadian ministers have admitted the timing of the ban was “unfortunate”. Canada imposed it on Feb. 2, just one day after the World Trade Organization rejected its request for a fresh review of Brazilian government subsidies to jet maker Embraer .

Canada has already won the right at the WTO to impose sanctions of $233.5 million a year on Brazil over the subsidies, which it claims have helped Embraer take regional jet sales away from Canada's Bombardier Inc.

The government dismissed comments by two unnamed Health Canada scientists in the Globe and Mail newspaper that insisted the ban was politically motivated.

“If there are headlines for the sake of generating a headline as opposed to a substantive story, if there are people commenting who aren't even on the file, even if they are doctors within the health branch, then that is unhelpful to Canada,” Industry Minister Brian Tobin said.

The opposition Canadian Alliance Party on Friday also accused the government of political interference in the food safety system, and said it should make public any information it had to justify the sanctions.

“This could seriously damage our trading relationship with our NAFTA partners if they believe we are using NAFTA as a club in the ongoing trade war with Brazil,” said Howard Hilstrom, the party's Agriculture Critic.

Canada says it enacted the ban only after Brazil failed for two years to provide information on its monitoring of imports of live animals and animal feedstuffs from countries with cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) -- known as mad cow disease.

Brazil has now provided that information, and Vanclief said Canada, Mexico and the United States are reviewing it.

“There will be a team of Canadian food inspection officials in Brazil next week to review that, and to see if the monitoring and enforcement there can ensure that the meat products from there are safe. And if so, we'll resume trade immediately,” Vanclief said.

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