A chartered flight transporting 156 U.S. bulls and heifers arrived at Ecuador’s Latacunga airport May 20, marking the first sale of U.S. live cattle to South America in a dozen years. The shipment, valued at almost $700,000, was the first since the 2003 detection of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the United States.

Ecuador has expressed it intends to purchase 20,000 to 30,000 head of cattle over the next three years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) Office of Agricultural Affairs in Quito. FAS Quito worked closely with staff from USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to facilitate the purchase by the Ecuadorean Ministry of Agriculture.