Brazil’s port labor strike hurting poultry exporters

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BRASILIA: Strikes and slowdowns by Brazil’s customs officers are creating serious delays for chicken exporters in Brazil, according to the Brazilian Association for Animal Protein (ABPA).
Marcelo Oliveira, the chief communications officer at ABPA said that the week-old strike by Federal Agricultural Inspectors (FFA) is taking its toll on chicken shippers such as Brazil Food Services and JBS Foods. The union is pushing for a wage increase of up to 35 percent.
Some Brazilian news agencies are reporting that 7,000 containers, or 14,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units, loaded with chicken and pork are currently “paralyzed” in various Brazilian ports.
“According to our members some 27,500 tons of chicken and pork are stuck in Brazilian ports waiting for clearance from the FFA,” Oliveira said, “and there have also been slowdowns by other port officials.”
The FFA’s actions come on top of slowdowns and “don’t turn on the computer days” that began in August by the Receita Federal, or general customs inspectors. Compounding problems for shippers, reliable sources said Anvisa, the port health inspectors, began “playing up” and making “extra demands” from shipping agents and shippers back in July of this year.
“Don’t turn on the computer days” are days wherein the inspectors refuse to turn on or do any work with their computers, which effectively means no work gets done or processed on those days as nearly all inspection processes rely on the Internet.
“With the agricultural port inspectors joining the slowdowns and no computer days of the Receita Federal, and Anvisa also starting to ramp up action, delays look inevitable,” said a spokesperson for the Brazilian Federation of Shipagents’ Associations.
Roberto Teller, president of the Santos Port Operators Association, said that all the container terminals in Santos, South America’s largest container port, had been hit by the strikes.
“We have had an ongoing strike for 10 days now and so the cumulative effect of this and the other actions are starting to impact on all our members now,” said Teller.