Food Safety Focus (166th Issue, May 2020) – Food Incident Highlight

New Arrangement for Importing Brazilian Meat, Poultry and Eggs

In light of the incidents concerning meat quality and falsified health certificates for meat products from Brazil in March and September 2017 respectively, the Centre for Food Safety (CFS) has been working with the Brazilian authority to improve the efficiency of food tracing in food incidents, enhance the safeguard of food safety and further refine the import regulation of Brazilian meat. The CFS and the Brazilian authority have worked out specific import requirements based on food safety considerations and made new arrangement for the import of meat, poultry and eggs from Brazil.

The new arrangement has been in effect since 18 May 2020. Under the new arrangement, the Brazilian authority will only issue official health certificates to food processing plants and premises which it considers eligible for exporting meat, poultry and eggs to Hong Kong. These eligible establishments are listed on the website of the Brazilian authority. In addition, the official health certificates for meat, poultry and eggs have been revised and samples of which can be viewed on the website of the CFSvia the following link:
https://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/committee/Notes_and_Presentation_Materials_TCF_20191120.html

The CFS recommends the trade to ascertain that the establishments are on the eligible list posted on the website of the Brazilian authority before engaging in trading of meat, poultry and eggs with them.