Western Producer reporter Ed White visited Brazil to explore agricultural development and opportunities for Canadians brought about by Brazil’s rise to prominence as an agricultural powerhouse.
SANTA TEREZINHA DE ITAIPU, Brazil – Brazilians eat a lot of beef, and they laud its virtues to foreign visitors, especially as waiters slice pieces of beef from giant skewers that just don’t stop coming to the table.
But out of the earshot of their hosts, foreigners are likely to complain about the meat being tough, unmarbled and too much work for jawbones.
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Brazilians know these criticisms, and some beef producers are trying to capitalize on their weaknesses to build lucrative niche markets.
Brazilians often praise their beef as the healthiest in the world because almost all beef cattle are left on pasture until they reach slaughter weight and the animals receive no growth-promoting hormones and few drugs.
At the Independencia slaughter plant in Anastacio, each box of beef celebrates the meat as natural, but producers in two Brazilian regions are going beyond simple claims of wholesomeness to actual, certified branding of their products.
In the state of Parana, which is free of foot-and-mouth disease and does not require cattle vaccinations, diligent producers can enrol in a government-monitored program to produce Boi Verde – or “green beef.”
Producers in this program have to go beyond the average Brazilian producer’s already low-input production and agree not to use any drugs at all for animals in the program.
To ward off flies, ticks and other pests, the cattle are sprayed with a herbal tea that rancher Carlos Alberto says works more effectively than any chemical treatment he has used.
They can’t be given any growth promoting chemicals in their feed.
Alberto said few cattle are in the program because “there is very high risk” if the herbal treatments do not work, but with some European markets offering a 30 percent premium for Boi Verde, some producers like him are willing to try the program.
In the subtropical state of Mato Grosso do Sul, researchers are trying to brand beef raised in a national park of swamplands to preserve both the natural heritage of the Pantanal and the 150 year history of the region’s cattle producers.
The terrain is so tough and conditions so challenging that calves there must be moved out after weaning anyway, so the committee overseeing the activities in the park has decided to try to sell the calves to slaughter as veal calves – and charge double the normal rate to the consumer by branding them as ecologically friendly products of the Pantanal.
Right now a calf can only be sold for about $115 US. But packaged as a Pantanal organic veal product, the beef has been able to fetch about $300 per calf.
