Tracking Beef Cattle: a Brief History and Analysis of the Brazilian Situation

Abstract

Food and feeding diet quality are highly important issues in so far as nutritional guarantee is coupled to the idea of food safety. Health crises were rife in the 1990s and deeply affected the tracking of beef worldwide. The European Union´s legislation required the tracing of food for human consumption, for animals and their components. In January 2002 The Brazilian Minister of Agriculture, Cattlebreeding and Supply issued an Instruction and published the Brazilian System for the Identification and Certification of Beef Origin (SISBOV ). Several changes in the Brazilian system of beef cattle occurred to attend to different demands of EU-based consumer market. When beef started to be tracked in Brazil, the producers´ adhesion grew gradually, together with exports to the EU, through 2006. By the end of 2006 and in the wake of new adjustments to attend EU requirements, the Brazilian system was modified with an increase in control and information demands. The farm´s and the animals´ certification brought about high costs and a decrease in the adhesion to the system. In the case of Brazilian beef cattle producers, tracking revealed great doubts with regard to commerce, market guarantees and new management practices that had to be adopted on the farm so that the system would be viable and warrant reasonable costs-benefits equilibrium compatible to the production system.