Brazil to notify Ivory Coast over bugs in cocoa

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian agriculture officials will notify Ivory Coast about the presence of insects in two shipments of cocoa it received from the world's top producer of the bean in July, a Brazilian agriculture official told Reuters.

The official said the shipments which arrived in early and late July and totaled 10,000 tonnes, did not have the usual documents showing they had been fumigated after loading into the ships' hulls, as Brazilian regulations require.

The official, who asked not to be named as he could not speak on the record about the issue, said the insects were found to be cosmopolitan, or common to cocoa-growing countries and were not a threat to local cocoa cultivation.

"We will inform Ivory Coast about what happened and probably send a mission there to speak to the national plant protection agency," he said, adding this was the first time the insects had been detected on cocoa imports from that origin.

A technician at the government cocoa development agency, Ceplac, said there were four or five kinds of insects found in samples, all of which were also common in Brazil. None were pests found on cocoa plantations, he said, describing them as more akin to fruit flies though he did not know the exact species.

The Ceplac official said the cocoa was undergoing fumigation after which it would be sampled again to determine whether it could be processed.

Brazil, the world's sixth-ranked cocoa producer, also imports beans for processing into cocoa products and confectionary for local consumption and for export. The country was the No. 2 ranked producer until the early 1990s when the fungal disease witch's broom decimated production.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/brazil-notify-ivory-coast-over-bugs-cocoa-150623305--sector.html

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