Brazil to have more cities in animal product inspection initiative

Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture on Thursday (Mar. 24) launched the second edition of Sisbi-POA, the initiative aimed at raising the number of municipalities in the Brazilian System for the Inspection of Products of Animal Origin.

By means of municipal public consortiums (CONSIM), the project should have technicians from rural municipalities and agricultural companies trained to conduct the inspection of products of animal origin. The services are expected to be included under Sisbi-POA, which allows manufacturers of meat, milk, fish, eggs, honey, and their by-products to sell their goods across the country.

Sisbi-POA operates as a platform standardizing the inspection requirements of animal-derived products, providing certification on livestock health with a seal.

Despite having been regulated back in 2006, Sisbi-POA did not speed up the admission of new municipalities until 2019, when training deals started being inked in inter-municipal consortiums.

The system went from 246 to 559 municipalities covered in the last three years, and leaped from 12 to 22 states, said Agricultural Defense Secretary José Guilherme Leal. Furthermore, the number of certified products soared from 5 thousand to nearly 10 thousand in the same timespan. “In three years, we have doubled its coverage,” he pointed out.

Now, in the second edition of project CONSIM, 32 new inter-municipal consortiums have been selected across nine Brazilian states. Altogether, some 520 municipalities may be incorporated into Sisbi-POA following the training, which should engage 30 thousand people all over the country.

“Everyone should benefit from this policy, which I hope will be made stronger and stronger at the Ministry of Agriculture. In three years we have doubled what we had, but now we have to multiply much more. There’s still a lot to achieve,” said Agricultural Minister Tereza Cristina at the project’s launch ceremony.