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Technical failure again halts Sonora cattle exports to the United States
🇵🇾 Paraguay /Economy & Trade

Technical failure again halts Sonora cattle exports to the United States

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Newswire Named sources Ongoing story
  • Live cattle exports from Sonora to the United States were temporarily suspended after a handling device failed at the Agua Prieta quarantine station.
  • Sonora cattle association president Juan Ochoa said the replacement equipment was being imported and exports could resume within two or three days.
  • The interruption followed the reopening of the Douglas crossing after more than a year of intermittent closures linked to the cattle screwworm.

A technical problem at a quarantine station has halted Sonora’s cattle exports to the United States again, only four days after the border crossing reopened.

Juan Ochoa, president of the Sonora Regional Livestock Union, said the failure began on Friday. Efforts to restart operations on Monday did not resolve the problem, which requires replacing a livestock handling trap.

Ochoa described the issue as “strictly technical” and said a backlog created during the prolonged border shutdown had left Sonora shipping cattle weighing 500 kilograms or more. The existing facilities were not designed to handle animals of that size, he said.

strictly technical

— Juan OchoaHe said the latest export suspension resulted from equipment problems rather than a new health restriction.

The replacement trap is in Douglas, Arizona, opposite Agua Prieta, and is undergoing import procedures for installation. Ochoa said exports should resume within two or three days, with crossing schedules delayed by the same period so producers do not lose their assigned slots.

The Douglas port reopened on Aug. 24 with an initial shipment of 750 head from Agua Prieta. Authorities expected volumes to rise gradually to 1,500 animals a day. The reopening ended more than a year of intermittent closures tied to the spread of cattle screwworm, after the United States first suspended Mexican cattle imports in November 2024 following detection of the pest in Chiapas. Ochoa said the current pause does not reflect a new health restriction.

We believe exports will resume within two or three days at most

— Juan OchoaHe estimated when the replacement livestock handling equipment would allow exports to restart.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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