EU clears Brazilian poultry and honey for return as audit removes technical barrier

An audit by the European Commission has removed the main technical obstacle to the return of Brazilian poultry meat and honey to the European Union market, Newsweek Romania reported. The audit confirmed that Brazilian chicken products offer adequate guarantees of compliance with EU rules, and both products could reappear in shops and supermarkets in Romania and elsewhere in the bloc within weeks.

That is a significant shift from the position at the start of September. Brazil was removed from the EU list of authorised suppliers of poultry meat and honey with effect from 3 September, after a technical objection concerning guarantees on the use of veterinary medicines. With the audit finding in hand, that objection has effectively disappeared.

What the auditors checked

The audit examined above all whether Brazil can guarantee that European requirements on the use of antimicrobial agents are met in the production of poultry meat and apiculture products destined for the EU. EU legislation prohibits, among other things, the use of antibiotics to promote growth or raise yields. DG SANTE, the Commission's health and food safety directorate, also verified:

• whether the production chain supplying the EU can be properly separated from other output;
• whether the traceability system works as required;
• whether the Brazilian competent authority genuinely controls all of these elements.

Beyond poultry farms and apiaries, the auditors inspected feed producers, slaughterhouses and official bodies. The breadth of the check matters, because the objection concerned controls across the chain rather than a single establishment. The final report carried particular weight because EU auditors had already given a favourable preliminary assessment at the beginning of September.

Administrative steps remain

Brazil must now be formally reinstated on the list of third countries whose guarantees on the use of veterinary products - antimicrobial preparations in particular - the EU accepts. According to Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture, what remains is mainly administrative and regulatory procedure rather than a new fundamental technical assessment of compliance.

Brazil has requested that the matter be placed on the agenda of the next meeting of the European Commission's Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (SCoPAFF). According to information provided by the Brazilian government, the committee could take up the question on 20-21 October. Newsweek Romania reports that Brazilian chicken will most likely be back in EU and Romanian stores in November.

The volumes at stake

The importance of the decision reaches well beyond an animal health procedure. Brazil is one of the EU's largest external suppliers of poultry meat: according to European Commission data, around 265,000 tonnes of Brazilian poultry meat arrived in the EU in 2025. Honey was caught by the same objection and is released by the same decision, so both trade lines reopen together.

Brazil's position strengthened further at the start of 2026. In January and February combined, 74,331 tonnes of poultry meat arrived from Brazil, 26.9% more than a year earlier, giving the country 43.2% of total EU poultry imports - more than two tonnes in every five. An exclusion maintained through the rest of the year would have stripped out a share of import supply that no single alternative origin can match at short notice. A restart in November limits the interruption to roughly two months of shipments, with the October committee date the main variable.