The European Union is planning to block exports from top Brazilian chicken exporter. Brazilian agriculture minister claimed the EU was masking its commercial motives for the import ban with sanitation concerns that have no technical basis.

While the global ‘trade war’ between USA and China is on the agenda, the European Union is planning to block exports from nine poultry plants of BRF, Brazil’s largest chicken exporter, to the trade bloc. EU may also revoke import credentials for other Brazilian chicken plants, Reuters reported. The country exported 6,400 tons of chicken per month to the European Union on average in 2017, trade group ABPA said. Brazil sold $317 million worth of fresh salted chicken to the EU last year and $118 million worth of unsalted fresh chicken, according to a presentation by the minister. Brazil’s Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi said they would launch an effort to appeal the ban before the World Trade Organization. “This issue of a trade war, we have seen the United States with ‘America first’ but there is also ‘Europe first,’” Maggi said. Maggi said he expected the EU to issue a final list of banned plants that includes the BRF plants and potentially those owned by other companies, following a planned vote by the European Commission on the matter. He said the EU was masking its commercial motives for the import ban with sanitation concerns that have no technical basis. “We are suffering from a commercial embargo, it’s not a question of sanitation,” Maggi said at a news briefing. The controversy over chicken exports arose after Brazilian federal police implicated BRF in a new phase of an investigation that alleged it sought to circumvent food safety standards.