DOENÇA DE HAFF: IMPACTOS ECONÔMICOS NA COMERCIALIZAÇÃO DE PESCADO NAS FEIRAS LIVRES DE BELÉM, ESTADO DO PARÁ

The commercialization of fish in free fairs is a very important activity, as the traders of this product guarantee their family maintenance from this practice. However, with the recent outbreak of Haff disease in the Amazon region, there has been a clear decline in trade in fish products. Thus, the objective of this work was to identify the effects of Haff disease caused to fish traders in free markets in the metropolitan region of Belém do Pará. The study region comprises the municipality of Belém, in the state of Pará, where technical visits were made to five of the main free fairs in the region in the period of October and November 2021. Semistructured questionnaires were applied and the responses were drawn up and processed using descriptive statistics and relative frequency analysis for plotting the graphs. 82 fish traders were interviewed at street markets where most were men over 50 years old and low level of education, it was identified that few had knowledge about Haff disease and that the disease had an impact on the economic aspect of traders of fish. Therefore, the Haff disease interfered with the economic behavior of the stallholders, showing that the fish trade is of paramount importance for the livelihood of this class.