Chihuahua, Chihuahua.- Álvaro Bustillos Fuentes, president of the Chihuahua Regional Livestock Union (UGRCH), asked the federal government to close the door to the imports of meat from Brazil, which in the last three years have increased their sales to the Mexican market to stop a price increase, but it has not occurred.
“You have to close the door to Brazil and we have nothing to sell to Brazil,” said the businessman in the 2025 agri -food forum, organized by the National Agricultural Council (CNA).
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“Why are Brazil meat and importing meat, when here in Mexico there is cattle to produce and sell it internally. Mexico has a surplus of living livestock heads, because they have not been able to export them to the United States by a suspension derived from the appearance of the bare -bare worm,” he said.
He said that the borers arrived on the border of Guatemala where more than 800 thousand heads of contraband cattle and illegally entered annually.
In 1991 Mexico was declared free of this plague thanks to control campaigns. But all that changed on November 23, 2024, when the first case of myiasis was notified by chiapas worm in Chiapas. To stop any contagion, the United States closed its border to Mexican cattle.
Such suspension was raised in mid -February 2025, after inspection and evaluation protocols of livestock will be implemented before export.
But the suspension was implemented at the end of May 2025 due to the persistence of the problem and concern about the propagation of the boreride worm.
Live cattle exporters have only sold 240 thousand heads between January and September.
Annually, Mexico sells more than one million 500 thousand heads of cattle to the United States, something that this year will not be fulfilled due to the presence of the baranger worm in some regions of the country.
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The package against inflation and loud, launched by the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to stabilize prices of certain products, increased the imports of meat and grains from Brazil to Mexico.
Mexico’s strategy eliminated the 75 percent tariff for chicken, the 20 percent quota for beef and pork, the 45 percent rate for turkey, the import tax of 9 percent to the rice with shell and 16 percent for the rice without peel.
With the elimination of tariffs, Mexico made purchases valued at 2,200 million dollars of Brazilian agribusiness products in 2022.
In 2023 and 2024, Mexican importers acquired more than 2,900 million dollars of Brazilian supplies. And in the first semester of 2025, Mexico was the eighth largest commercial partner of Brazil, which has sold more than 1,200 million dollars to the national market.
“I know that many rumors and comments have aroused, a recent visit from a delegation from the Government of Brazil, which was chaired by the vice president of said sister nation and the Minister of Agriculture,” said the head of Sader.
The Brazilian government delegation proposed to Mexico important changes in health treatment, particularly with its livestock products, he recalled.
“Mexico with the greatest respect informed the Brazilian delegation, which we certainly have interest in deepening trade with Brazil, but we do not plan to modify the health protocols,” he added.
“There is no decision or will have to make the PACIC, a permanent and generalized instrument and there are no and the president of the Republic has said that she does not consider signing a free trade agreement with Brazil,” he said.
