Brazilian beef and poultry imports into the EU are banned from Thursday 3 September following the failure of Brazil to guarantee that produce being exported to the EU is free from antibiotics.

The EU has banned Brazilian beef on two occasions in the last 20 years, once in 2008 due to issues around where the beef was being sourced, with evidence that some was coming from areas of Brazil with widespread foot and mouth disease along with illegal hormone use and traceability issues.

The second time is this week with Brazil’s failure to comply with food safety regulations around antibiotic use being the main reason that the current ban is being implemented.

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On both occasions the Irish Farmers Association and the Irish Farmers Journal’s undercover investigations were critical to the Brazilian beef ban taking place.

There have been a lot of changes across the world in the last 20 years, with European farmers being held to higher standards by its lawmakers and consumers.

Conversely, little has changed in the last 20 years in Brazil, with a huge gap still present between Brazilian production standards and European standards.

These poor standards were continually highlighted in the run up to the ratification of the Mercosur trade deal, but some Irish politicians and industry figures were quick to defend the quality of imported Brazilian beef and its use.

Investigation

Some questions may now have to be asked about the merits and reasoning behind this defence. In October/November 2025, myself and Philip Doyle, picture editor with the Irish Farmers Journal and Tomas Burke, senior policy executive with the IFA, visited a number of states in Brazil to investigate what is actually happening on farms in relation to antibiotic use.

During the trip, we were able to purchase high level antibiotics which are heavily regulated for use in Europe and categorised HPCIA (Highest Priority Critically Important Antibiotics).

We were able to walk into those farm shops and stores and freely purchase prescription-only antibiotics without a prescription, without a herd number, without a tag number, without identification and most importantly of all, without speaking any Portuguese.

We pointed at some of the antibiotics that we wanted on the shelf and paid for them with either cash or card.

None of the antibiotics that we purchased had a barcode on the bottles or boxes, demonstrating that there is currently no system for recording either the purchase or use of antibiotics in Brazil.

It also highlighted the flagrant disregard that the Brazilian authorities have for antibiotic usage and in turn antimicrobial resistance.

We witnessed the widespread use of in-feed antibiotics used for promoting higher cattle growth rates in feedlots in Brazil and also the availability of hormones to purchase that have been banned in the EU since the 1980s.

Ironically, the EU has a target of reducing antibiotic usage by 50% by 2030, with a continuing tightening of the availability of high-level, critically important antibiotics.

Untraceable

To add to the complete lack of monitoring of antibiotic usage, we also found a total lack of any traceability system throughout the supply chain from farms, through livestock marts and on to slaughter plants.

There was also a huge amount of confusion regarding what the actual regulations were for entry to the EU market at farm level. In my opinion, it will take years for Brazil to implement any type of recording system of usage of antibiotics on farms.

Brazil can’t realistically prove compliance for a number of years given the life cycle of beef animals. The EU Commission has come in for a lot of criticism on the back of the Mercosur trade deal, but European Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare Olivér Várhelyi has taken a brave decision to ban Brazilian beef.

When the IFA presented its findings to the Commission as part of their lobbying campaign, Várhelyi gave an undertaking to IFA president Francie Gorman that if there were issues with Brazilian beef, he would act on it – and he has.

Ireland exports 90% of the beef that we produce. As an open economy, we depend on exports, so it’s difficult to criticise imports when getting our beef into other markets is critical to the Irish beef industry.

What we can argue for is that any beef imported into Europe or Ireland is produced to the same standards as European and Irish farmers are asked to adhere to.

In today’s world of a fast-paced news cycle and populist social media posts, we can sometimes forget the importance of factual, researched, evidence-based reporting, the very building blocks on which the Irish Farmers Journal is built.

The Irish Farmers Journal team will continue to work tirelessly and ask the hard questions to make sure that Irish farmers have a voice and that their livelihoods are protected against substandard product.