This Wednesday, the Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development (Sader), Julio Berdegué, acknowledged that, despite the progress in the negotiation with the United States to resume the export of livestock, there are still no “conditions” to set a date for reopening the border after months of closure.
“We have made a lot of progress, I am very optimistic, but we are still not in a position to make an announcement on the date on which exports will reopen”said the official during the presidential press conference.
Berdegué explained that the conversations with the US authorities are “very intense and very frequent,” but clarified that because it is an ongoing process, he cannot reveal details.
“I was in the United States last Friday and yesterday I spoke again with Secretary Brooke Rollins by videoconference. We cannot say all the details because they are ongoing negotiations,” he said.
Washington’s partial closure of the livestock trade came after the detection, almost a year ago, of an outbreak of the screwworm fly, a pest that affects cattle and other species.
Berdegué reported that Mexico has been fighting the plague for 11 months, and that 99.9% of the cases have been contained in the states in the south of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
“We will be able to completely eradicate it when we have 100 million additional flies.”he explained, in reference to the binational biological control program through the release of sterile flies.
The secretary added that the new sterile fly production plant in Metapa (Chiapas, south) is progressing as planned.
“We started at the beginning of July. A few days ago we were 28% complete and we should be close to 30%, that is in full process there in Metapa,” he explained, about the border town with Guatemala.
Likewise, he revealed that Mexico and the United States agreed to test mobile modular plants to increase the production capacity of sterile insects.
“They have never been used in the world, but if they work well they would give us up to 20 million additional flies each week,” Berdegué said, calling the initiative an “unprecedented innovation.”
The Mexican Government hopes that these actions will allow livestock exports to be restored as soon as the sanitary conditions agreed with the US are met.
Mexico is one of the main suppliers of live cattle to the United States, with exports that exceed one million heads per year.
Until now, the industry has estimated losses of 1.3 billion dollars, according to data from the National Agricultural Council (CNA).which has reported the interruption of the shipment to the United States of at least 650 thousand heads of cattle due to the closure generated by the proliferation of the screwworm in the Mexican southeast.
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