(Reuters) – Brazil has confirmed two cases of bird flu in wild birds, the country’s Agriculture minister Carlos Favaro said on Monday, though the ministry later said the country was not expecting a ban on imports of Brazilian poultry products.
Favaro said on Twitter that two birds with the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) of subtype H5N1 were identified on the coast of the southeastern Espirito Santo state.
Later, the agriculture ministry published a statement saying that because the cases were detected in wild animals, Brazil’s status “as a country free of HPAI” was not affected.
The ministry added that therefore “other WHOA [World Organisation for Animal Health] member countries are not expected to impose prohibitions on the international trade of Brazilian poultry products.”
Brazil is the world’s top chicken exporter.
(Reporting by Carolina Pulice and Peter Frontini; Editing by Isabel Woodford)
