(SAO PAULO) - European consumers are paying dearly for EU restrictions on Brazilian beef that have shrunk imports to a trickle and sharply raised supermarket prices, buyers say.

"The price of Brazilian beef has jumped 60 to 70 percent since January," Rollo Thompson, the managing director of a British meat importer, Cranswick Country Foods, told AFP during a trip to Sao Paulo to meet shut-out suppliers.

Prices were likely to climb further as contracts negotiated six months ago come to an end and are revised, he said.

He and another British buyer, Miles Cheetham, owner of a corned-beef company called DCD, added that problems in other beef-producing countries were adding to the problem, citing a long running farmers' strike in Argentina and a drought in Australia.

The European Union in February slapped a ban on Brazilian beef because of insufficient safeguards, such as tagging.

After much haggling, EU officials agreed to allow in beef from 106 certified farms -- a tiny number which resulted in Brazilian beef becoming a luxury-priced product in British supermarkets.

The Brazilian Beef Exporters' Industry Association told AFP that in fact only 82 farms were authorized to export meat to EU countries, but that it hoped more would soon be allowed as checks were carried out.

"The European market is very important to us, even though we have other important markets we export to, such as the Arab countries, north African countries and the Middle East," said Priscila Souza, of the association's technical department.

She added that Russia was the biggest importer of Brazilian beef, buying 462,000 tons of raw and processed meat for a value of one billion dollars last year.

Brazil is the world's biggest beef exporter, sending abroad almost 2.3 million tons per year, a third of total exports around the globe. Last year it earned 4.5 billion dollars from the trade.

In 2007, before the EU restrictions, it sent around 280,000 tonnes of beef and beef products to the European Union, almost half of the bloc's total beef imports. Of that total, 194,000 tonnes was raw beef that was subject to the EU ban. The rest was processed meat, which was not.

Among EU states, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Britain were, in order, the biggest importers of Brazilian beef.

Thompson said the EU restrictions on Brazil meant EU states increasingly relied on Irish beef, with the result that prices for that product had also sharply risen.

The knock-on effect for other meats meant "the same is probably happening in poultry and all protein-based products," he said.

Souza said that of the various problems faced by beef-exporting nations, "Brazil's is probably a lot easier to resolve, because it requires human decisions."

Australia's woes depended on an unforgiving climate, and Argentina's situation was not likely to improve soon because the government there was intent on beef export quotas to ensure that its populace were not ignored by suppliers eyeing the more lucrative overseas markets, she said.

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