Associated Press
February 8, 2001

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- Restaurant owners are dumping Canadian ducks in the trash. Protesters in the capital delivered a cow to the Canadian Embassy and offered to barbecue it. Politicians urged a ban on imports of Canadian goods.

Canada's ban on Brazilian beef, prompted by concerns about mad cow disease, has triggered a backlash so intense that the government warns that it could spell the end of the dream of a hemisphere-wide free-trade zone.

After Canada imposed the ban on Feb. 3, the United States and Mexico, Canada's partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement, were obliged to follow suit.

In a good-humored protest and to support Brazil's claim that its cattle are mad cow-free, a group of students delivered a 495-pound cow to the Canadian Embassy in Brasilia on Thursday and suggested it be barbecued.

The cow was graciously received by the embassy's business attache, Jose Herran-Lima, who said he would consider a barbecue once Canada is sure Brazil is free of mad cow disease.

In Sao Paulo, two nationwide trade associations representing 5,000 restaurants and bars started distributing stickers saying, "This establishment does not sell Canadian products."

The two associations kicked off their anti-Canada campaign Wednesday by dumping several bottles of Canadian whiskey and a couple of frozen Canadian ducks into a trash can.

The government may take more serious measures: The Foreign Trade Chamber said it may seek compensation for losses incurred because of the ban. O Globo news agency quoted the chamber's executive secretary, Roberto Gianetti as saying Brazil may take its case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

There have also been calls for Brazil to boycott the Summit of the Americas, to be held in Quebec in April. At the summit, chiefs-of-state from 34 nations will discuss the next steps toward creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a hemisphere-wide free trade zone.

"They have underestimated our capacity for indignation," said the president of the Brazilian Rural Society, Luiz Suplicy Hafers, who proposed that Brazil boycott the summit. The society is a powerful lobby representing landowners and cattle ranchers.

The ban "threatens" the creation of such a free trade zone, said Brazilian Agriculture Minister Vincius Pratini de Moraes.

"Whenever Brazil shows it can be competitive, someone comes along and tries to stop us," Moraes said. "It happened with footwear, orange juice, steel and now with beef."

Interviewed earlier by the Globo TV network, Moraes reiterated the government's position that Canada's fears are groundless because cattle in Brazil feeds mainly in pastures and not on ground-up cattle parts, which have been blamed for spreading mad cow disease in Europe.

Canada, meanwhile, has moved to stop its dispute with Brazil from escalating into a full-fledged trade war.

In a note, the Canadian Embassy said the ban on beef imports was "due to the absence of information requested showing that the Brazilian herd is free of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy," the technical name for mad cow disease.

"Now that the Brazilian government has finally remitted the requested documentation, Canadian authorities will evaluate the information ... and once it is determined that that Brazil is BSE-free, the ban on beef imports will be lifted," the note said.

The note said Canada requested the information in 1998. Brazil maintains that all the necessary documentation was delivered to the Canadian government that year.

"We are working with the Brazilian Congress and ministries to accelerate the process to certify that Brazilian beef is free of mad cow disease," Herran-Lima said Thursday.

Mad cow disease has been linked with a fatal human equivalent, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which has killed some 80 Europeans since the mid-1990s, mostly in Britain.