Brazil scandal to hit global meat trade

The scandal around adulterated meat, shady practices, and endemic corruption in Brazil has sent shockwaves around the world and will have a substantial impact on the global meat trade.

Brazil is a major global player in meat exports and surpassed the USA as world No 1 beef exporter in 2016. Yet US beef output, at over 11m tons, is still higher than Brazil’s 9m tons (carcase weight equivalent) but Brazil exported c.20% of its beef or 1.850m tons in 2016. On a product weight basis (allowing for boning out etc) the exports were about 1.2m tons of beef.

In 2016, the key markets for Brazilian beef in 2016 were: Hong Kong (15%); China (14%); Egypt (14%); Russia (11%); EU (9%); and Iran (8%), according to the USDA. According to the Brazilian Beef Exporters’ Association, quoted on GlobalMeatNews.com, the value of Brazilian exports for the first two months of 2017 was worth $846m (€782m). Interestingly, their figures suggest EU demand for Brazilian beef was becoming more significant. Their figures put the EU as the third most-important market for Brazilian beef in value terms for the months of January and February 2017, while Hong Kong and China combined accounted for some $320m of imports in the same period.