Cattle Exports Remain Unaffected Amid New World Screwworm Outbreak in Belize

As authorities work at containing the spread of the new world screwworm in the south, Minister of Agriculture, Abelardo Mai says the exportation of cattle would not be hindered or affected.  He explained yesterday that Belize has been very transparent with its trade partners and have been utilizing the livestock tracker application as a tool in its containment strategy.

Jose Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture: “My senior advisor and I, and other people from the ministry, lobbied with the new minister of foreign policy, Dr. Julio Berdegue, who’s been very, again, very supportive of Belize. And we said to him that it’s a matter of time but we are doing our best to keep it out. So Mexico had it first and then we had ours last week and our responsibility is to inform them immediately. You don’t play games with this because you have to be transparent. I don’t know if other countries have been transparent, there are some concerns about that but Belize will be transparent when it comes to this. We can’t hide this. They had said to us that in the previous protocol which has now expired because it’s a new situation now, that if we would have had screwworm they would have suspended our exportation for 12 months until after Belize declared itself screwworm free. Now, you know that the cattle industry right now is at 90 to 100 million dollars a year. There are more cattle farmers today than cane farmers in the north. There are about 5,500 cattle farmers, I think, and there are 5,400 cane farmers. So there are more cattle farmers than cane farmers. During the peak of the COVID, it was cattle that helped the economy to do that. Earn some badly needed foreign exchange and ever since there have been millions invested in the cattle industry. So for us to lose a market because of screwworm was unacceptable. And that is what triggered us to meet with the Mexicans. They have been very helpful. They have said to us, they have proposed to us to make changes to the protocol but not a single day will be lost in exporting cattle to Mexico.”

For 2024, Belize reported the exportation of 5,848 heads of cattle to Mexico with a value of nine point four million dollars.