I. Introduction to Brazilian beef cattle industry

There are 230 slaughterhouses of beef cattle in Brazil. ABIEC has 33 members, accounting for 93% of all beef exports. Among them, 16 member companies now export beef to China.

In 2017, Brazil had a pasture area of 164.96 million hectares, a herd of 221.81 million cattle, a slaughter of 39.2 million heads annually and a beef output of 9.71 million tons. 79.1 per cent of total beef production is supplied to Brazil's domestic market (7.68 million tons); 20.9 per cent of beef was exported (2.03 million tons), of which 77.4 per cent was frozen and chilled meat, 11.0 per cent was processed beef products and 11.6 per cent was offal and other products.