EU Commission Response to Recall of Brazilian Beef is Pathetic – Full Audit Must be Published

IFA President Francie Gorman said that the EU Commission’s response to finding illegal hormones in beef imported into the EU is pathetic. The Commission must publish the full audit immediately. 

“The Commission response, as carried in the Farmers Journal this week, that it is “up to Brazil” to remedy the situation beggars belief. This was the same rhetoric we heard last year when the EU found that the procedures Brazil allegedly had in place to prevent this particular hormone, Oestradiol, from entering the EU food chain could not be relied upon,” he said.

We were told then, in late 2024, by the Commission that Brazil stopped sending beef from female animals into the EU until the matter was resolved. Yet product with this exact hormone has now turned up in Europe and has been belatedly recalled with some of the meat already consumed in some Member States.

“Now this week the Commission tell us that they ‘have been engaging constructively with the Brazilian authorities’. The Commission is telling us again, one year on, that these same Brazilian authorities have now ‘committed to ensuring corrective measures and an effective action plan are in place’”.

This is a pathetic response. The latest recalls back up the findings of ‘wild west’ controls from the IFA and the Farmers Journal investigation in Brazil last month and which  are comprehensively detailed in the report launched this week.

It is also notable that the Commission has said that the full report on this audit and it won’t be published until early in 2026 which is after the Mercosur vote in the EU Council. This is totally unacceptable.

The Commission must publish this full report now and pause all beef imports from Brazil.

“The time for relying on assurances from the Brazilian authorities is over. The EU Commission found their assurances were unreliable last year, and now again this year and here they are ‘engaging constructively’ with them on putting an ‘action plan in place’. This approach is making a laughing stock of the EU Commission,” he said.