The Brazilian government and farm groups expect to resume chicken and honey exports to the European Union within two months. The projection, reported by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, follows an audit of both supply chains by EU inspectors that ended in Brazil on Friday. In the most optimistic scenario, the government hopes sales restart before the runoff round of Brazil's presidential election.
The EU ban on Brazilian animal products took effect on September 3 and covers all 27 member states: beef, chicken and pork, plus honey, fish and eggs. Brussels says Brazil's controls on antimicrobials in livestock are insufficient; the bloc bans the drugs as growth promoters and bars in animals those reserved for treating people. No Brazilian shipment has been found contaminated, according to state news agency Agência Brasil. The blockade threatens up to US$ 2 billion a year in exports. Chicken alone earned US$ 763 million from Europe in 2025, according to ABPA, the poultry and pork industry association.
Chicken and honey can come back first because their production cycles are short. A broiler takes about 45 days from hatching to slaughter, according to news site g1; a steer raised under the new EU requirements takes 24 to 36 months, which pushes any beef comeback out by at least two years even if the ban is lifted. The audit report now goes to European authorities, a review expected to take about two months. The bloc's sanitary committee is only due to reassess the technical files for these chains in November, according to Brasil de Fato.
What Brazil has put on the table
The government has negotiated since the suspension was announced in May. In April, the Agriculture Ministry banned antimicrobials such as avoparcin, virginiamycin and bacitracin by decree, according to g1. In May, Brasilia proposed a transition period; the EU refused. In June, the industry, with farm confederation CNA and auditing firms, launched a protocol that tracks each animal from birth to slaughter; exporter association Abiec says every member authorized to sell to the bloc has signed on. ABPA president Ricardo Santin says production for Europe has always been segregated, with no growth promoters or human-use antibiotics, and that the change is added inspections of feed mills, farms and slaughterhouses under Brazil's national residue control plan. A European Commission spokesperson told the AFP news agency that exports "can be resumed" once compliance is proven.
Honey is the smallest item at risk, but it had been accelerating: sales to the bloc nearly doubled in this year's first half, to US$ 6.35 million from US$ 3.18 million a year earlier, according to g1. The honey exporters' association Abemel puts its losses at US$ 4 million between September and December. "It ends up being a bucket of cold water on exporters who were already reaping the rewards of market expansion," said Abemel president Renato Azevedo. Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy are the main buyers. Farm lobbies call the measure protectionism, noting it was announced days after the EU-Mercosur trade deal took effect, and CNA has asked Brazil's foreign ministry to consider retaliation through the treaty itself.
For chicken and honey producers, a resumption within two months would cap the blockade at little more than a quarter. For cattle ranchers, the timeline is still counted in years. European consumers would get back a supplier whose shipments showed no contamination identified by the EU's own review. While the ban lasts, cargo bound for Europe is shifting to the domestic market and other buyers, a substitution the industry itself calls hard because each destination demands specific cuts.