SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to the weekly hotline. Over the next three episodes, we're taking a look at something that is becoming increasingly important for phenomenalist here in New Zealand, even though it's happening on the other side of the world. Brazilian brief. Brazil is already the largest brief exporter on the planet. It's a plot market because the Middle East and increasingly Europe. And it plays a major role in treating global products and expectations around how brief is produced. But it's global experience in your agreement is a negotiated agreement in the brief. What is a plummeted? What does that mean for phenomenal can treat in New Zealand? And this number of the most regulated systems in the world. When beef from different systems compete in the same marketplace, those differences can become significant. In part one, we hear how the investigation began what Brazilian cattle farming actually looks like on the ground, and the early discoveries that prompted the journalists to dig deeper.

SPEAKER_05 1:56

Brazilian beef exposed. This is especially this podcast brought to you by the Irish Farmers Journal.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Once again, we have more evidence in front of us of what is going on in Brazil. This is a report of a journalist from an Irish newspaper, the Farmers Journal magazine, highlighting the wanton abuse of the sale of illegal uh illegal drugs across Brazil. These journalists traveled 3,000 kilometers for provinces that could buy without identification, without herd numbers, they could continue to buy antibiotics. They have never heard, obviously, of antimicrobial resistance in Brazil, have they?

SPEAKER_02 2:36

If we continue to use antibiotics the way we're using them, we won't win the battle against AMR.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

What price do you put on human health for generations to come? This is no longer an economic argument against allowing beef in in the Mercosur Trade Agreement. This is a human health issue, not only for uh EU citizens, but for the world, because AMR does not recognise borders.

SPEAKER_08 2:58

So when we go in here, we're looking for either a generic version of Draxon, Marbasil, Newfoundland.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

They're a tree who's a big they're the big ones at home. But we should look to go maybe at a higher level first, looking at the Romansin, maybe the Callistin, even though it's banned, we know what it should look like on the shelves. And let's try and hit the hit as high up the chain as we can in there. And the empty body, good price. Thank you. Happy Goddam.

SPEAKER_07 3:29

Yeah, yeah. The Mercosur trade deal is one of the largest trade deals that Europe has ever completed with another country. It's been in the making for the last 25 years and is currently in its final stages of approval before the end of 2025. It's good news for big business. Car companies, technology companies, and white good manufacturers across Europe will stand to gain billions as a result of this trade deal. It's very bad news for the European beef market. 99,000 tonnes coming in at a reduced tariff could have severe implications across the European beef market and in turn huge implications for the Irish beef industry. If that 99,000 tonne comes in as high-end premium stake cuts, that could decimate the steak market.

SPEAKER_04 4:21

At the end of October 2025, the Irish Farmers Journal, in conjunction with the Irish Farmers Association, visited a number of states across Brazil as part of a trip to look at Brazilian beef production systems. Adam Woods, Deputy Editor of the Irish Farmers Journal, Tomal Sperk, Senior Policy Executive for Animal Health with the Irish Farmers Association, and Philip Doyle, our head of photography here at the Irish Farmers Journal, set out to investigate Brazilian beef farming, traceability and antibiotic regulation, and how it compares to European farms. What we discovered has repercussions that will reverberate globally for many years to come. I'm Katrina Morrissey, and over the course of this podcast we will hear how the investigation began, what Brazilian cattle farms are like, the reaction to our findings and the impact on the Mercosur trade deal, and what the consequences are for human health globally. What kickstarted this investigation, Adam?

SPEAKER_08 5:14

I suppose, Katrina, we we we always maybe knew or that there was substandards taking place in Brazil. And you know, speaking to farmers every day, they'd talk to you about, you know, maybe using hormones in Brazil, but we could never really prove it. And I guess if we look back to the last investigation by the Irish Farmers Journal and the Irish Farmers Association in 2006 and 2007, that showed up a lot of substandards and a lot of malpractices compared to Irish systems and European systems. And I guess yeah, we just I suppose wanted to go out there and take a look at that.

SPEAKER_04 5:43

You went to the World Meat Congress originally. I mean, that was the first uh stop on the trip, wasn't it? Why how take it from there?

SPEAKER_08 5:48

Yeah, I guess World Meat Congress took place in Cuba. It's in the state of Madagrosso, um home of 34 million cattle, um, a huge cattle-producing state, um, and a really good conference and a lot of good speakers there about the future of meat and the future of meat consumption. We then took a a trip across country uh over to Brasilia, uh, where the World Uh Farming Conference was taking place ahead of COP 30, the World Farm Organization Conference. Um, and during that trip, I guess there were four states taken in at 3,000 kilometres. We visited farms, we visited Lifestock Marts, and we visited agricultural supply stores. And I guess it was the agricultural supply stores uh that really showed up something that we didn't expect to see, but with that we did find Adam set the scene for me.

SPEAKER_04 6:36

Three gringos in a Jeep in Brazil, yeah, distinctly Irish looking, no Portuguese. How did it go?

SPEAKER_08 6:44

Yeah, I suppose we had some debate beforehand or in the route, and I'll I'll never forget being with Philip up here in the farm centre, um typing in a sort of quiaba to Brasilia, and and Philip said it's it's taken us um around uh sort of a round way or whatever, and and uh there was a mountain ridge in between that we hadn't we we hadn't barred used.

SPEAKER_06 7:03

I'm so Katrina, I'm a scout, as you know, and this is very little. An actual scout scout just enough. I've been a scout since I was a kid, and there's there's not very much I need to go out and do something, but I do like to have a rough idea of a plan. And to be fair, how this all started was probably about three weeks before Adam said, How would you feel about going to Brazil? Just between us now. We won't say anything, but how would you feel about going to Brazil as a country? And he's like, Yeah. And I was like, Oh, okay. So he kind of gave me a r rough idea of what was happening, and then literally six days beforehand, he rang me and said, Right, we're going. We're going on Sunday. And I was like, Go, sorry, go and where, Adam? And he's like, Brazil. And I was like, Oh, that's actually happening. Yeah, basically, it was like we're going on on Sunday. Um, you'll probably need injections. Um, so I had to go and find injections. So the one day we were in the office, so I'd get injected that week because it was it was quite a rush, but one day we're in the office to go back to Adam's map. I said, Adam, I just need a little bit about like I'd like to have in my head where we're going, because Brazil is a really big country. So I opened up Google Maps on my computer. This is the level of planning that I got actually before, to be fair, uh, before we left. And I said, Right, so where are we going? Okay, there's Cuba, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're gonna drive to Brasilia. And he's like, Yeah, yeah, but we're gonna go up here, we're gonna go down there, we're gonna drive around or whatever. And I said, Okay, well, can we just map that here and see? So I mapped it on the map and I did it on a satellite. And he's like, Yeah, so we're going over there. I said, Over that's like that's like a thousand kilometres as the crow flies, and you're going up and down. I said, We could be getting up to three thousand kilometres here, Adam. He said, Yeah, yeah, we grand, we grand. I was like, but it's over five days, like that's a lot of driving. Yeah, it'd be grand typical. Adam, it'd be grand, it'd be grand, we're grand. And then halfway through, he goes, actually, zoom in there. Is that a mountain range? No, really. Oh, we have to drive through a mountain range. So that was that's where we were in terms of getting there and understanding what if if you landscape wouldn't like these things too much, sometimes it it overcomplicates things.

SPEAKER_04 8:55

Telling me that would you be a fellow now for thinking about it before you go, or would you just land at the airport and I know I think have a cut at it and see where it takes us.

SPEAKER_03 9:02

I I think the the the abiding memory that's a vision a lot of people have of Brazil is that it's not terror roads you're actually driving on. And we might be giving out about potholes in Mayo and in Cavan, but they're at a different level in uh in Brazil when you're doing 130 kilometers trying to keep up with a lad in front of you that's bringing you to a farm and you start hitting these potholes. Certainly tested the suspensions of the Jeep and uh and our own constitutions on occasion, um, but very dusty, and they have these other uh we call them uh road bumps here or speed bumps here. Uh they're about 18 inches high in the appear of an over on the on the motorway. So if you haven't your your wits about, uh you're putting your head through the the the roof of the Jeep, and uh we had a few occasions where the driver who was uh mostly Adam didn't notice the early warning sign, so we got a good jolt to reality hitting this uh 18-inch ramp and uh left uh left the ground for a while. But uh after two or three days of that, you start to get aware of them and you start to be more sensitive to what's in front of you.

SPEAKER_08 10:03

Like on a serious note, like tension was highly. We were told some stories before we left about safety out there and about maybe not driving at night and having some cash on you if you get into trouble or whatever. So that's in the back of your head all the time, no matter where you are. And bear in mind as well that when you leave a village, you're completely devoid of any phone reception. So until you get to the village again, nothing. Okay. Um so you're just thinking in the back of your head, you know, something that does happen here. We don't really um have a plan B here in terms of where we're going.

SPEAKER_04 10:28

Moss, were you nervous driving around, you know, given that the warnings about safety and things like that? It's you know, it's no joke.

SPEAKER_03 10:33

No, uh, in fairness, I think Adam summed it up. You you would be on edge, you had to be alert. Like these were 13-hour days out in the in the wilderness effectively, with very sporadic coverage of the phone, or you'd have to head back maybe two or three hours to pick up even Google Maps to see where you were going. So long days, as Adam said, look, you're on edge, you knew you were trying to pick up something, you're you're you're out there to do a job, um, and very limited coverage. And then you had the issue of cash, having cash on hand, not having too much on hand. A lot of places the cars wouldn't work, and as Phil said, little things like trying to trying to make sure we had uh the petrol in the Jeep or the diesel in the Jeep uh became big challenges. And uh, you know on the other hand though, the people there would despite the fact they had very uh no English, because it wasn't a touristy area, uh and really no uh support for tourists or or English speaking fellas, extremely helpful though. Um and we ran into a problem with a charger on one of the very first days and two young lads in an iPhone shop uh spent a half an hour and got it sorted and wouldn't take Anthony for it, that type of type of thing. When we filled up with the at the gas station that uh Philip mentions, none of our cards had actually work. So we had to travel two hours in the opposite direction to get an ATM to get the cash to come back and pay for for the for the petrol, and that was the scale uh of what you were facing every day. So every morning when you hit the road around seven or eight, you didn't know what you were going to get caught into, what uh what what gravel roads you were going to get stuck on, and a lot of these with timber bridges covering them, these were the main roads we would think you were driving into a farm, which was actually the main road onto the next onto the next town.

SPEAKER_04 12:17

And did you meet many in the way of officials? You know, was there was there any bribery? Did you come across anything like that over there?

SPEAKER_08 12:23

Uh no, we didn't. Uh I think we're followed once in a village uh in terms of a Jeep. We were filling for diesel. Well you you're quite sort of um, what would you say, conspicuous in terms of um, you know, the the three individuals that were there? It was well, you know, to be seen that we weren't local. Um so so we did get some looks in different places, and that particular village, I think it was three times that Jeep came up and down after us up the up the village. Um but once we got back out to around a bit again, we were away again. So that look at us in the back of your head absolutely as maybe what what's going on, or or even going into those stores as well. You're sort of you know, it's it's heightened tension absolutely going in now.

SPEAKER_03 12:57

Yeah, and I think the big difference, Katrina, from uh I'd have mentioned when the lads went before uh when we cut into America or meet anybody within a couple of minutes through Google or whatever, they knew who we were, they knew where we were from, and we were conscious of the reputation both the AFA and the the Farmers Journal would have in Brazil from uh what the lads did uh 10-15 years ago. Um whereas back then uh nobody knew anybody but literally within minutes um they would have you up on their phones and young fellows hanging around. So there was nothing really that you could keep undercover, so um you had to be always alert and aware because these people knew, and obviously it was strong agri area uh and people with a strong vested interest in agricultural production and the value of it, so they certainly wouldn't have a great welcome for people out there that would be trying to undermine what they do.

SPEAKER_06 13:47

The good the good thing was that actually a lot of them Instagram was a big thing, believe it or not, in Brazil. And that's what we learned pretty quickly. So not having language, and obviously I was carrying cameras, um I know it's the first day, the first thing they say, Instagram, Instagram, and I was trying to pick it up, and I was like, oh, they're actually saying Instagram. So I actually put my Instagram on front of my phone and showed them straight away. And that broke a lot of the language barriers for a lot of people. They actually loved the idea of getting their photograph taken. Um that worked quite well, you know.

SPEAKER_08 14:15

I think as with a lot of things that evolved as we went, um, you know, you're you sort of we didn't plan out uh a lot of visits, we just sort of ended up in places, um, and then we probably found out more by doing that. Whereas if you plan visits, maybe there's an official side to it. Whereas if we're if we're just rocking up on farms, maybe looking at things, it's a lot easier. Um and I guess on the agricultural supply stores, no, there was no plan there. Basically 13 stores uh just drive up outside them and we went in. Uh we had a hidden camera with us um in terms of capturing some footage when we went in there to prove that we were able to purchase uh those antibiotics. Um and yeah, no issue at all, I guess, in terms of those shops uh selling those across the counter. And that was the really surprising thing.

SPEAKER_04 14:56

Yeah, we'll come back to that in a minute. But I mean, the farms that you stopped on, what what is Brazilian beef farming like?

SPEAKER_08 15:02

Yeah, look, it's really different, and the scale is absolutely vast, you know, like in terms of thousands of cattle on farms, um, cattle are never housed over there, something very different from Ireland. Um, really nice people have to say that and say that you know Brazilian farmers really accommodate and in terms of uh want to talk about the production systems um and talk about the farming systems. A lot of feedlot cattle, uh so uh an awful lot of farms are small farms, um, and they would say rear the calves up to a point, uh like at home, uh up to a Wienland stage or up to a store stage, and then they move on to a feedlot to be finished in very, very large feedlots. Those one of those feedlots could accommodate 50,000 cattle that we we pass by. Um so huge, uh we'll say business like operations at that end, whereas at the other end, uh quite small operations in terms of cow calf operations, Nilore cattle, the majority of the cattle that we've seen, some angus being crossed on them, uh, and for those are the ones with the lump on the back of their neck. Uh, people will be familiar with them, white cattle, uh not like anything you see at home, um, quite we'll say, you know, thin in nature and and not very conformed like like some of the cattle we have at home.

SPEAKER_04 16:04

Completely different back in to any of the Belgian blues that you'd see in Elfin or or March like that.

SPEAKER_08 16:09

Completely. They would they wouldn't uh they wouldn't rate at the winter fair last weekend at Carrick and Shannon at all. Completely different on white because they deal with the heat. Um cattle maybe looked, uh I thought on on our visit and our trip a little bit bad because I think they're just coming to the end of the rainy season, or sorry, end of the dry season, waiting for the rainy season. Grass was in short supply, so a lot of the cattle we seen probably was a function of that in terms of having poor poor volumes of grass uh for them. So you'd expect maybe in a couple of months' time maybe they'd look a bit better.

SPEAKER_04 16:37

Philip, you document Irish farms all the time. How different was Brazil? You know, what what did you see as a photographer, as a videographer? It must be wildly different.

SPEAKER_06 16:46

Um yeah, I suppose the big thing for for me driving around was, well, number one, the cattle are completely different. And as Adam has said, you're you're not looking at the same one, obviously not the same breed of cattle, but even how they look, you're you know, you're seeing a lot more kind of ribs, and it's just not the same as as what you'd have here. But in terms of landscape and the size, it's the size um and the volume that got me even driving around like we cover 3,000 kilometres um driving through tillage land and um cattle land, and uh I've never seen so many cattle, um, and so many cattle in kind of the one space. As Adam has said, it probably reminded me a little bit of probably kind of 2018 in Ireland when you know we had the drought. There were areas there that was that was very yellow, um, but very interestingly, you drive two hours across the mountain range and then everything was green again. But you could see the difference in I suppose the type of farming. So, like anywhere, I suppose you you have really good farmers with really good systems, and you could see people using irrigation a lot where you would definitely see a lot more kind of green grass and that. But then, like I said, you go over another hill and it was just yellow and and and burnt out, but they were waiting for the rain to come.

SPEAKER_04 18:01

I have this vision of Brazil, um, and you know, we we associate Brazilian deforestation with with areas being deforested for cattle. On your travels, did you see areas that had been clearly once rainforests that are now cattle farms, or was it a different area than that?

SPEAKER_06 18:16

No, it's hard to tell. Um what we did see was a lot of very uh wide open plains with trees in it. Um, from talking to a farmer on one particular farm, he was explained that they're actually not allowed to take down any tree. And if they take down any tree and they're being monitored uh by satellites that they would face um prosecution or fines or whatever. Um now, having said that on our last day, we went on a bit of an adventure because we were driving through a farm and after being told to not allow to take anything down, we did see quite a large um field or a couple of fields uh that had clearly been cleared and that timber was kind of lined up in line. So we wanted to get a little bit closer there, so we got a little bit of a video of that, but I suppose we didn't get into the background of why it was cleared or anything, but it was beside quite a large feedlot.

SPEAKER_08 19:03

It's actually similar to home in terms of maybe east and west, except you go through areas of mountain that are dominated by sucklock cows, and then you come into an area of really good land, and that's soya and tillage. Um so so that so the good land uh is is tillage and and growing for soya and corn, whereas the poorer land um is is back for suclock cows and cattle production. And we spent some time around Primore Belo West, um, a city, would you believe that's only 40 years old, I think, uh based on soya production. And you know, Philip has photos there of huge cues of lorries coming into a very large soya plant. Um and we visited a tillage farmer um just outside that town or city in terms of growing two crops, and that's a huge thing with Brazil. And thing we learned when we were over there in terms of soya is going in uh now, uh it will be harvested in February, uh, and then a crop of corn will go in and that'll be harvested now. So it's two crops, and that shows you the massive production and the massive potential that that land has to produce compared to back home where we just get one crop. So another very interesting aspect of it was that tillage piece of it.

SPEAKER_04 20:00

Yeah. Tomos, the lads have touched on it there, but uh Brazilian farming is so different to Irish farming. What did you see that kind of what hit you most?

SPEAKER_03 20:08

That's right, Katrina. Uh well, I suppose the first thing is the the similarities is what you would take from it. And we had some very good engagement with Brazilian farmers and uh one particular farmer who's involved in a farmer organization over there, identified a lot of the the challenges similar to ourselves, income, profitability of of farms uh and that type of thing. I I also think it's important that we reflect that the farmers over there are very receptive, very open, very helpful, no different than farmers here. Uh and I think a key message we got from a lot of the actual farmers was that they nearly had as much of an issue with chasing down the EU market as we do with them uh chasing it down because they didn't like the the concept of the regulations, the rules, the costs that are brought to it. I suppose Brazilian farming is a i i is a structure of extremes. We all have the image of the confinements and the the the densely populated acre or acre and a half with 150 cattle on the on the clay all year round. But in a country of two hundred and thirty-eight million cattle, there's only about eight million in those confinements. Uh-huh. Uh and obviously out of the eleven million slaughtered. But when you look at the actual costs involved, and Adam touched on it there, like we we passed one particular farm with over fifty thousand cattle, and the infrastructure consisted of timber stakes, electric fence wire around them, and a few forty ton trucks pumping meal into feeders. That's the level of investment required.

SPEAKER_04 21:41

So no sheds, no slurry storage, no expensive equipment?

SPEAKER_03 21:45

No nothing. It was basically fence off with electric fence, uh, an acre or an acre and a half, put 150 cattle in with a big concrete traw uh and pump it in. The other key point we noticed was that obviously that had the cattle or been finished from confinement. Elements. And we have this vision of extra extremely large farms in Brazil. And there are some. And I said, well, the biggest difference was that the large farms in Brazil are just off the charts compared to here. The farm with the 50,000 cattle, his neighbour actually was a bigger farmer than him. And that wouldn't be off the charts. But the interesting figures was that in 60% of the farms in Mato Grosso have less than 200 cattle. And 80% of those 60 had less than 50. And a lot of those are subsistence type farming systems with four or five cows, where they're actually milking a cow for the house and rearing the calf at the same time. So that's the scale of what's involved there. And obviously the big issue that jumped out is the complete lack of traceability. And the bigger issue from that is how you would actually implement a traceability system given that level of divergence and difference in scale. So I think the big image that we could that I came back with was that look, the small farmers are even smaller than ours, but the big farmers are a lot bigger than ours.

SPEAKER_04 23:04

Adam, I'll come back to you because can you spell out, I suppose, what were your initial findings when it comes to antibiotics and those agricultural stores that you visited?

SPEAKER_08 23:12

Yeah, so to paint the picture here, Katrina, you know, every city and town and village has an agricultural supply store, maybe two of them, because it's so centred around agriculture and cattle farming, uh, there's these stores in in every little village that you that you drive through. Um, you know, and they're like any store in Ireland, I guess, in terms of selling drugs, uh, selling dosing products, uh, selling building materials, selling animal feed, uh, the same as that in here. So basically, a counter uh in um no Portuguese, um no herd number, no tag number, no proof of requirement that we needed um the antibiotics, and basically all all I done and and all the moss done was just point to the to the antibiotic that we wanted and and and said in our best Portuguese antibiotico or whatever whatever else and got it and and got common drugs like Draxon, um like Tylen, um like uh uh cetafor, which is a really critically highly important antibiotic in human health, not alone um animal health. Um and again, no questions asked and no barcodes on the bottles, um, which means that there's no system within the store to monitor or track usage. Um and and again, in terms of no receipts, um, in some cases receipts in some cases, but uh obviously there's near zero requirement to morrow that on farms out there because you you take it home and there's no record kept. So um in terms of the fight against antimicrobial resistance, and we talked to Professor Martin Cornikan and University of College Galway about this, that's where the real problem lies here in terms of uh standards in Europe. Uh, for the last 20 years, we've been looking at that uh in terms of reducing the use of antibiotics and and and we'll say responsible use of antibiotics. And here we are in Brazil and they're just throwing them out across the country. In one store, they said, uh, do you want two of that? Or is one enough? You know, and that that's that that's what we're looking at.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

That was part one of our Brazilian beef series. What stands out straight away is the sheer scale and diversity of the Brazilian system. From small subsistence farms with only a handful of cattle through to operations finishing tens of thousands of animals and feedlots. It is a beef industry operating on a completely different physical scale to what most of us are used to in New Zealand. But alongside that scale are some important questions around traceability, regulation, and the way animal health products are accessed and used. Those are issues that go well beyond one country. Because in a global protein market, the standards applied in one region can influence the competitive landscape everywhere else. For New Zealand phonemes, the discussion is worth paying attention to. That's all coming up in part two of our Brazilian beef investigation here on the Weekly Hot War. Thank you for listening and catch you next time.