How can the Amazon gain new markets beyond China, the U.S. and the EU?

Cattle from the Amazon already reach major buyers in the international market, such as China, the United States and the European Union (EU), but these trade relationships are unstable and the sector still has room to grow, especially if it focuses on increasing productivity without new deforestation. That is the assessment of Camila Trigueiro, a researcher at the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (Imazon), who notes that the Brazilian federal government has been drawing closer to other beef-importing countries, such as Japan and South Korea.

According to Trigueiro, the U.S. market has been unstable since the USA imposed increased tariffs on Brazilian goods, and China’s import quota for Brazil has already been exhausted this year. As a result, there is concern within the sector that Brazil could end up losing market share, which is driving a move to diversify buyer options. “They are potentially interesting markets for Brazil that we still do not access for several reasons,” she adds.

One factor is that the United States and Australia have consolidated their positions over the years as beef suppliers to Japan and South Korea, meeting those countries’ requirements and adapting to their internal bureaucratic procedures. “South Korea has a free trade agreement with the United States, which ends up facilitating trade between them in terms of price,” she says. As a result, Japan and South Korea already associate cattle from Australia and the United States with safety, reliability and animal health, a level of credibility that Brazil would still have to earn.

One of the criteria these countries had required for some time was that the exporting country be free of Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) without vaccination, something Brazil achieved only recently. “Now it is possible to seek access to these more demanding markets, but a common dynamic is that when these countries obtain certification, they almost immediately begin implementing individual animal identification. Because if there is a disease outbreak, they can trace it very quickly and identify where the problem is,” she explains.

But Brazil is not there yet. The Plano Nacional de Identificação Individual de Bovinos e Búfalos (“National Plan for the Individual Identification of Cattle and Buffaloes,” PNIB), launched in July 2025, stipulates that by 2029 all animals undergoing animal-health management, such as vaccination against brucellosis, a bacterial disease that affects farm animals (cattle, pigs and goats), must be individually identified and registered in the system.

Meanwhile, the Programa Pecuária Sustentável do Pará (“Pará Sustainable Cattle Ranching Program”) managed to identify just under 2% of the total herd in the initiative’s first two years, and the deadline was extended by another electoral cycle, to 2030.

Sustainability takes a back seat in several international markets

Although the debate over sustainable cattle ranching is heated internationally, in practice few importing countries appear to be genuinely concerned about it, according to Camila Trigueiro’s analysis. “In terms of productivity, I believe Brazil is capable of producing enough to serve new markets. However, what it needs to do is pay attention to animal-health criteria. As for sustainability criteria, other markets do not appear to be moving toward requiring sustainability, apart from the European Union, China and the United States,” she says.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) bloc, for example, is an important market for cattle from the Amazon. According to a Radar Verde report, published in 2025, this market represents a strategic US$1.79 billion trade destination for Brazilian beef. “Brazil’s meat exports to this region grew a great deal last year, perhaps because it emerged as an alternative for exports that previously went to China,” she says.

In the Legal Amazon, there are 72 slaughterhouses (owned by 32 companies) authorized to export to the main countries in the MENA bloc, accounting for 58% of the region’s slaughter capacity. These companies comply with animal-health standards and the established certification requirements, but if this market began requiring a high level of control over direct suppliers today, only 54% of the plants would be able to meet those requirements (representing 35% of the Amazon’s slaughter capacity), and none of the facilities can demonstrate audited control over indirect suppliers.

“This is a market that is still not very engaged with the issue of sustainability in the beef supply chain. In fact, we make simple recommendations that they could incorporate, such as screening for slaughterhouses with lower exposure to deforestation risk and prioritizing those with greater transparency and control, even if initially only over direct suppliers,” Camila Trigueiro emphasizes.

Even so, the researcher notes that the European Union, the United States and China have significant influence over international practices. “I believe that only in the coming years will we be able to assess whether Brazil will prefer to focus on improving its practices to meet demand from these more demanding markets, or whether it will prefer to gain access to other markets, new markets that do not have these sustainability requirements, but that possibly do not consume the same volume either,” she concludes.

For cattle coming from the Amazon, meeting the demands of a market with stricter social and environmental standards would be “even more delicate,” Trigueiro points out, mainly because of the history of correlation between cattle ranching and illegal deforestation and the gaps in land-tenure regularization.

Overview of Amazon exports to the EU, China and the U.S.

While the MENA bloc currently imposes few sustainability-related requirements, the European Union already requires due diligence (a detailed investigation of legal, environmental, tax and operational risks) and geolocation data for every property the animals have passed through. Currently, Brazil’s official individual animal-health traceability system (SISBOV) covers only the 90 days before slaughter and does not record the animals’ history on previous farms of origin.

According to Radar Verde’s analysis, in 2025, 15 slaughterhouses located in the Legal Amazon (all of them in the state of Mato Grosso) were authorized to export to the EU, but 87% of those plants had a low level of control and 13% had a very low level of control over the cattle supply chain.

Similarly, the United States requires public due diligence systems and traceability of direct and indirect suppliers, and there are also 15 slaughterhouses in the Legal Amazon licensed to export beef to the country. Although 93% of the facilities are signatories to a Termo de Ajustamento de Conduta (“Conduct Adjustment Agreement,” TAC) with the Federal Prosecution Service, none responded to the Radar Verde questionnaire in 2025. As a result, 100% of the licensed slaughterhouses received performance ratings of low or very low effectiveness for their anti-deforestation policies.

For Alexandre Mansur, projects director at O Mundo Que Queremos, it is long past time for Amazon cattle ranching to work toward ensuring a high level of supply-chain control in order to capture a larger share of the global market. “If a major buyer like China signals that it wants to buy beef with stronger guarantees, that is the time to seize the opportunity and work to offer these countries special beef packages with controls,” he says.

Mansur also says that government officials should view sustainable cattle-ranching programs as a market advantage. “It is a measure to improve an important sector of Brazil’s economy, improve competitiveness and productivity, restore degraded land, employ more people and improve the quality of rural jobs. In other words, investing in cattle-ranching controls means proposing measures that have immediate social and economic benefits,” he emphasizes.