SAO PAULO, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Brazilian meat exporters, who faced the threat of bird flu reaching commercial poultry farms for the first time last year, managed to ship a record 5.138 million metric tons of chicken products in 2023, according to industry lobby ABPA on Monday.
The export volume, which includes fresh and processed products, confirms positive projections from ABPA last year, and represents a 6.6% rise in relation to the total exported in 2022, which was 4.822 million tons.
Brazil has never recorded an outbreak of bird flu on a commercial poultry farm, unlike the United States or France, where millions of animals had to be culled to stop contagion in recent times.
For that reason, Brazil is considered free of HPAI, which means it is not subject to any trade bans under guidelines from the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH), according to ABPA.
Chicken export revenues were $9.79 billion in 2023, also an unprecedented mark for the world's top chicken supplier, which continued to benefit from strong global demand.
Overall, Brazilian chicken exports in December totaled about 467,000 tons, nearly 21% above the same month the year before, thanks to large orders from countries like Japan, the United Arab Emirates and China.
"Despite the challenges of the year, including a scenario with marked variations in markets and production costs, the result is highly positive," said ABPA President Ricardo Santin in a statement. "For the first time we surpassed the mark of 5 million tons of chicken exported."
Santin also praised local companies' ability to maintain the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAI) out of Brazilian commercial poultry farms, which he said increased importers' confidence in the local bio-security protocols.
(Reporting by Ana Mano and Roberto Samora; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
