Brazil meat conference shows progress on environment and welfare

It’s fair to say Brazil’s reputation on environmental issues has been less than glowing. Headlines about deforestation of the Amazon, wildfires and floods have caught the media’s attention. And green policy during the presidential reign of Jair Bolsonaro was nothing short of a catastrophe.

The meat and agriculture industry, of course, shoulders a huge environmental burden given its role as a monster carbon emitter.

However, the Latin American giant’s role in feeding the world cannot be ignored.

It’s a role Brazil’s meat lobby takes very seriously. The much-repeated message at its biennial international animal protein trade show – held in São Paulo from 6 to 8 August (known as Salão Internacional de Proteína Animal locally or SIAVS) – is “striving for a world without hunger”.

Since SIAVS last took place in 2022, the country has elected new president Lula da Silva, who has made big green promises. So, what progress has the country’s meat industry made in that time?

This year’s SIAVS show – organised by Brazilian Animal Protein Association (ABPA) – was 60% bigger in terms of space than previous iterations. The poultry and pork conference went multi-protein with the inclusion of beef, fish and poultry genetics under its umbrella.

In his opening speech, ABPA president Ricardo Santin told delegates – including governors, ministers, congressmen and producers, as well as media from around the world – that “Brazil is better than no one, but no one is better than Brazil”. The fighting talk received rapturous applause.

But equally, there was an acknowledgement of the work needed on the environmental front. If the amount of times the word ‘sustainability’ was used during SIAVS indicates anything, it’s that the industry knows it has a big job to do in repairing reputational damage.

Sustainability was at the heart of every presentation, panel discussion and exhibition. There is even a dedicated website to showcase all the initiatives at play, from biodigestors and solar plants to investment in effluent treatment systems.

It’s a point Brazil is particularly keen to hammer home given the scale of its meat production and consumption. The average Brazilian eats 45kg of chicken a year – about 10kg more than the average Brit – and another 30kg of red meat. It is the largest exporter of chicken and beef in the world (and number four in pork and fifth in eggs, producing 1,600 of the latter every second), shipping out 5.1 million tonnes of poultry to 150 countries in 2023 and 2.3 million tonnes of beef, with half of the latter total going to China.

It expects to up its poultry production from last year’s 14.8 million tonnes to 15.1 million in 2024 and 15.3 million in 2025, with the hope for a subsequent boost to exports.

Numbers that big don’t come without a potential cost to the surrounding landscape and environment. Last year, another 5,153 sq km of the Amazon was cleared and initial hopes on da Silva’s green agenda have mostly faded away following mixed results. But there are also signs Brazil is taking steps in the right direction. Although that 5,153 sq km of cleared land may sound like a blow, it still represents a 50% year-on-year reduction in the rate of Amazon deforestation, according to space agency data.

Challenges and misconceptions

Santin is keen to highlight that 80% of Brazilian poultry and pork production takes place in the south and south east of the country, some 2,000km away from the Amazon region. (Corn and soy grown to feed animals is linked to the clearing of land in the biome, though.) Brazil has one of the strictest environmental legislations in the world, Santin adds – even if critics have complained of weak enforcement by local and federal authorities.

“We understand the combination of isolated situations, presented out of context, has created an unfair and completely misleading image of Brazil,” Santin tells The Grocer over a churrasco dinner at a traditional steakhouse.

It’s worth noting that most deforestation to raise cattle occurs illegally on public property and is perpetrated by a small percentage of criminals. Santin likens tarring the whole nation with an anti-environmental brush with viewing all Italians as being part of the mafia.

He has a point. The major meat processing conglomerates in Brazil – JBS, Marfrig and BRF, who are responsible for 60% of the world’s animal protein – are certainly not producing or exporting more because of deforestation. There’s no correlation between the two. In fact, no giant corporation wants to foster deforestation for the simple economic reason that it shuts down key markets and destroys the image of the industry. BRF, for example, has a strict ‘no deforestation’ policy. Whether the practice is legal or illegal at the country of origin, the company does not accept supply of those products.

Brazil vs UK

It might be stating the obvious to note how convenient it is for the US, EU and APAC competitors to use environmental issues as a means of putting the brakes on Brazilian protein expansion, especially under the guise of new deforestation regulations in Europe.

Equally, the UK would be hard pressed to adopt any kind of smug stance on its green standing compared with Brazil. The truth is far from pretty on our own islands, with the UK among the most nature-depleted countries in the world, according to the 2023 State of Nature report. It showed we’ve lost more natural biodiversity than most other western European nations, with one in six species at risk of extinction. And around 95% of wildflower meadows have been eradicated since the 1930s, which has dramatic consequences for pollinators and therefore implications for food security.

Intensive farming and land management is largely to blame. Megafarms are proliferating in the UK and waterways such as the River Wye have become horribly polluted, with campaigners blaming nearby poultry farms.

Claims of the UK’s much-heralded superiority when it comes to animal welfare over countries such as Brazil have also taken a hit this year, as delegates at SIAVS were only too keen to point out, following the recent scandal involving RSPCA Assured Farms.

In other ways, Brazil’s meat industry is world-leading, whether that is for biosecurity or use of blockchain technology to ensure full traceability through the supply chain. The latter is light years ahead of the UK, which has only completed pilot schemes.

Recent audits by the EU found Brazil made major progress in improving controls on poultrymeat sent to Europe. The FSA in the UK last year lifted strict import controls for beef and chicken after concluding significant steps had been taken to rectify national food safety systems.

Brazil is also proud of being the only major poultry producer in the world never to have registered cases of bird flu in its industrial production.

Nevertheless, the spectre of avian influenza hung over SIAVS after the state of Rio Grande do Sul declared the end of an outbreak of Newcastle disease – a highly contagious virus – in July. Quick action was taken to contain the virus and there was a temporary suspension of shipments from the affected region, which disrupted trade with key partners such as China, Argentina, Peru and Mexico.

It highlighted how an outbreak remains a critical concern for the global poultry industry, requiring an ongoing strong focus on biosecurity. 

It is no exaggeration to say any major outbreak in Brazil would represent a disaster worldwide, with massive consequences for chicken prices. Especially in the UK, which has been a key trading partner with Brazil since the 1980s. The UK is the 16th largest buyer of Brazilian chicken meat, having imported 55,000 tonnes of poultry from January to July this year. It also bought 14,360 tonnes of beef during the same period, mostly corned beef.

Potential growth in exports

However, Brazil still sees opportunities for growth. Currently, it does not send us any pork. Santin wants to change that. “We have been providing high-quality pork meat to almost 100 countries, including Japan, the US and Canada,” he says. “We are the fourth-largest [pork] exporter in the world, and we would like to contribute by offering some cuts to UK processors to help to balance the local needs.”

“EU production and exports are decreasing year after year,” Santin adds. “In the opposite direction, Brazil’s production and exports are growing. So, Brazil can be a reliable alternative for the UK.”

Indeed, exports of pork and pork products from the EU to the UK fell to the lowest volume on record in the first quarter of 2024, while the British Meat Processors Association warns the situation could worsen during the rest of the year as a result of new border controls introduced by the UK in April.

One message was clear: Brazil stands ready to increase meat trade wherever it can across the globe. Santin says the world will need Brazil as populations grow, and reckons there should be no borders or protectionism when it comes to food.

If Keir Starmer and the new ministers at Defra are serious about tackling food security, Brazil is a market too big and too important to ignore, whatever their misgivings over the environment.