Brazilians Destroying Forests Is Their Business—What’s It Got to Do with Us?
The Amazon rainforest is vanishing at a rate of millions of hectares per year.
In the first two decades of the twentieth century, deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon region reached 44 million hectares—an area larger than China’s Yunnan Province. Livestock development is the primary driver of illegal deforestation—cheap pasture and feed underpin the low-cost advantage of Brazil’s beef industry. Industry giants led by JBS have long been sourcing livestock from illegally deforested pastures, raking in “environmental windfalls”.
In January this year, a work funded by Foodthink’s Lianhe Programme “‘Fake Meat’ Drives Out the Real Thing: Dinner Tables, Pastoralists and the Amazon” revealed that JBS meat products have already found their way onto the tables of pastoralists on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Since 2022, mainland China has imported over one million tonnes of Brazilian beef annually, accounting for more than forty per cent of total beef imports. In addition, Europe, Hong Kong, China, is also a major destination for Brazilian meat products.
Some believe the link between beef consumption and deforestation is utter nonsense—a classic “China-is-to-blame” narrative. Some champion environmentalism, arguing that imported Brazilian beef relieves pressure on China’s rangelands and is therefore a “necessary evil”. Others prioritise food security, warning that reliance on imports will sooner or later leave the country in someone else’s stranglehold.
There are also readers who try to grasp the complexity the piece seeks to convey. They recognise the destructiveness and negative externality of industrialised production systems, the multi-dimensional value of traditional husbandry, and can viscerally feel how biodiversity loss, accelerating climate change and the injustice of food-agriculture systems shape our community with a shared future for mankind.
What do you think? Where do you fall on the spectrum? Take part in the poll at the end of the piece and leave a comment to tell us what you think.
Viewpoint 1: They Just Want to Jack Up Prices!
A nonsensical article. They just want to jack up prices—that’s all, based on the pittance of meat these pastoralists sell. The rich can afford it. Ordinary people—forget about it!
Protecting their own interests is what this is really about. Imported meat has devastated the once-soaring prices of beef and lamb, so they’re using a real-meat-versus-fake-meat distinction to shore up those inflated prices.
Meat got cheaper; their profits took a hit, that’s all. Ordinary people live day to day—they buy whichever is cheaper.
The interesting thing is that every cattle farmer thinks their own cattle are the best and should fetch a higher price. Yet most people who pay to eat beef don’t accept that price; some pastoralists themselves don’t accept it either—when buying meat, they go for cheaper imported cuts. Nobody denies that grass-fed is better than grain-fed, but no one points out that grass-fed is about feeding the rich better, while grain-fed is about making beef affordable for ordinary people. Stop going on about Tibetan yaks having omega-3s that are good for your cardiovascular system. For ordinary people, simply being able to eat beef—being able to eat more beef—is already an improvement in their lives. Yet domestic yak herders seem to have contributed almost nothing to that improvement while demanding to earn more. In short: if you think your cattle are the best and you deserve to charge more, sell to the wealthy—sell globally.
On one hand, you feel sorry for the pastoralists who have been devastated and loathe the profit-driven destruction of the environment by capital. On the other, you think cheaper beef means more people can afford to eat more meat—after all, China’s per-capita meat consumption is low to begin with.
Objectively, I understand and sympathise with the pastoralists, but with a salary of three thousand, I’d like a taste of beef too.
As an ordinary consumer, bowing to the price when facing the basics of life—rice, oil, salt—is hardly blameworthy. As the old saying goes, only when the granaries are full do people understand propriety, and only when clothing and food are sufficient do people grasp honour and shame. Faced with these grand questions, most people will still prioritise meeting their most basic survival needs. Real change is hard to achieve through individuals alone.
Viewpoint 3: Small-Scale Operations Simply Can’t Beat Industrialised Farming
Free-range husbandry will never compete with intensive, large-scale farming. That’s a rule of business.
Their pasture is better, their technology is better. Instead of thinking about improving their methods, they just shout complaints.
This is just a glimpse of the so-called advanced, developed products of human social and technological progress and industrial division of labour. You can call it progress; you can call it regression. But it is an inexorable trend of the times—one that you can neither resist nor fully understand why it must be so.
A lot of people simply cannot afford to buy expensive beef and lamb—their income levels are what they are. With imports supplementing supply and pulling prices down a bit, more people can afford meat. Isn’t that a good thing? As for pastoralists’ incomes, industrial transition is a process, and the growing pains along the way are unavoidable. Think back to the hardship of workers laid off back then—that was the same hardship for the whole country.
Why are beef production costs so much lower for foreign producers but not here? Isn’t it because the efficiency of pastoral-area husbandry is too low and costs too high? Isn’t it not that imported meat is cheap, but that domestic meat is overpriced? What is there even to discuss about small-scale operations losing to industrialised farms?
Traditional production models in the market-economy era must be reformed. You must keep pace with the times.
A wonderfully written, deeply realistic piece. As someone born and raised in Gannan, this article touches on things that few locals ever examine. As a region on the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the pastoral economies of our three counties—L, M and X—were once pillars of local industry. But traditional pastoralism, structured much like the household contracting system, combined with natural limitations such as the absence of large-scale rangeland, has kept our livestock sector intensely local and traditional—unable to compete with the capitalised, factory-scale meat industry. It’s like comparing western American ranching with the Pampas meat factories: with globalisation of the economy and capital, decline is inevitable. South America offers more than just Brazilian beef, and Argentine beef did not only reach the Chinese market in recent years. What exists is rational; for most consumers, their purchasing choices do, to some extent, represent market demand… the market determines demand, and capital absorbs sunk costs. But as people born and raised here, we don’t want to see a foundational local industry compressed indefinitely to the point where its future hangs in the balance. I believe sustainable development and industrial upgrading of local pastoralism are urgent priorities. Most locals, when buying meat for themselves, tend to buy only local grass-fed—caobiao, the meat from animals raised on open natural rangeland—and rarely choose imported products. Even local restaurants have premium categories that highlight caobiao and other locally raised meats. But relying solely on this small local traditional market, alongside the younger generation’s fading awareness of it, simply cannot withstand the impact of the capitalised livestock industry.
Why is meat that strictly follows food-safety standards, passes inspection and quarantine in more than one country, and circulates legally in many parts of the world considered “fake meat”? Why is meat produced by traditional methods—methods that are clearly unhealthy, unhygienic and unsustainable—considered “real meat” simply because it comes from a traditional way of life? Why cling to and celebrate a production lifestyle that is inefficient, unhealthy and unsanitary? Why is a safe, healthy, efficient way of producing food—one that enables more people, including many poor people who previously could not afford meat, to eat meat at a lower price—presumed to be wrong or bad, even when it complies fully with laws and regulations?
(In reply to the above) You are completely conflating all these concepts. 1. Safety and health are two different things—try drinking Coke as your daily water. 2. Qualities like health and flavour inevitably get compromised when safety and profit are the priority.
The quality and safety of imported meat actually surpasses that of most local meat—it’s just the freezing that affects the fresh taste and texture.
In fact, the quality of beef and lamb from Brazil, Argentina and Australia isn’t bad either; it’s mainly that transporting it to China requires freezing, and the taste of frozen meat is inevitably different from fresh.
Profit is just profit. This “strictly following food-safety standards” has long been empty words! Look at the entire Chinese diet today—strict adherence to food-safety standards has long since been hollowed out by profit and so-called modernisation! I ask you: is your home cooking healthier, or the so-called food-safety-compliant ready-made meals?
Dairy production has very high demands for raw materials and processing. Most of the milk we drink nowadays—what you might call “antibiotic milk”—exceeds antibiotic limits. There’s no getting around it, just as many of the medicines people take for various conditions contain hormones. Raising cattle is no different. Then there are the demands of processing and production environments—it’s quite a hassle.
I’m a farmhand working at a feedlot. You have no idea how filthy it is here. I wouldn’t dare eat the meat myself. They give the animals injections every few days. I won’t go into further detail. I can’t say what’s in the shots. If you can, stick to properly raised meat.
Fattening has completely destroyed the authentic flavour of the meat. Truly. Since fattened beef and lamb appeared, I’ve hardly touched any—it stinks so badly. With fattened beef and lamb, maybe the texture has improved, but the original taste has gone rank. Lamb is even worse. Grassland beef and lamb used to have a distinctive character that set them apart from meat produced elsewhere, but now it all just stinks—only the regional name differs.
I went to Inner Mongolia before—the beef there is yellow-fat beef, and it really is delicious and so filling. We ate by weight at a barbecue restaurant; the two of us polished off 750 grams (no other side dishes ordered) and were completely stuffed. Back in Shanghai, we could easily eat a kilogram and still want sides… In 2021 I bought a piece of bone-in meat there and froze it. I cooked it in 2024—when I blanched it, there was barely any blood foam, and it was incredibly fragrant, not gamey at all. No scallion, ginger or star anise needed—just a pinch of salt and it was ready, beautifully fresh, with a hint of milky sweetness.
Free-range beef and lamb from the Tibetan plateau are the healthiest of all.
Honestly, I grew up in a pastoral area and I love meat—really love it. But now when I eat out, I won’t touch the beef or lamb at those restaurants. It’s 100 per cent imported. It’s not that imported meat is bad—I just don’t want a single bite of it.
Viewpoint 7: “There Are Always Treacherous People Plotting Against Me!”
The classic argument that China is guilty—so a China that couldn’t feed its people before the 1980s is now expected to bear the guilt for Brazil’s destroyed rainforest.
Oh yes, yes, absolutely—so Chinese people eating meat are the chief culprit behind the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, while Americans eating meat is perfectly fine. The classic spineless public intellectual.
You can’t only embrace free trade when you’re dumping your goods on others. Besides, whether or not Brazilians destroy their rainforest is their business—what has it got to do with us?
Brother, you’re not wrong. Today they say eating meat harms the rainforest; tomorrow they’ll say eating seafood harms the ocean; the day after, they’ll say your industry is harming the atmosphere. The moral finger-pointing and the psychological manipulation will never stop. In the end, even breathing will be a sin. Look at how banning open-field straw burning now means pest and disease problems are getting worse and worse.
Ordinary people eat ordinary imported meat, but this indirectly protects our own rangelands—on top of pulling down beef prices. In this economic climate, we can finally afford beef all year round, so why don’t they mention that? Sacrifice the small self for the greater good—what’s wrong with that? Must beef prices stay sky-high for it to be acceptable? Of two evils, choose the lesser. It’s no easy task being China’s parent, is it?
Also, don’t take the blame for deforestation and pin it on yourselves. It has nothing to do with us. Looking after our own environment is the greatest contribution we can make to the world.
If you absolutely must draw the connection, let me say something politically incorrect from a globalisation standpoint: perhaps it is precisely because of globalisation and widespread imports—relying on imported soybeans to fatten beef cattle and importing meat directly—that our pastoral areas and grassland ecosystems don’t have to bear the weight of China’s food security, allowing us to maintain “China’s Water Tower” and the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau ecological barrier… So quite a few people here are working to advance “zero-deforestation soy” initiatives. It’s still early days, but it’s worth watching. Any effort to connect a local reality to a broader perspective is admirable, but it must also be handled with care, because the complexity involved may far exceed what we imagine. —In Any Case, Yaks Should Not Be Just Beef
Do you know why the state keeps buying imported meat? Do you know how much is invested each year in restoring and protecting rangelands? Do you know how much in farming-equipment subsidies goes to pastoralists every year? I hope you can look at this comprehensively, in light of the country’s long-term strategic thinking. Try spending more time with people in the agriculture and pastoral sectors—I used to think the same way, but after repeated contact and gaining a real understanding of national policy, I believe the state truly is thinking long-term. No matter how much imported meat Chinese people eat, it has nothing to do with tropical rainforest destruction. Don’t slap on caps from thin air. They could entirely choose other approaches. Our own Chinese rangelands need protecting too. Let’s look after our own house first.
Mate, if you won’t eat it, plenty of others will. But you need to understand: the soybean situation didn’t blow up overnight. A lot of people around here have stopped raising cattle and sheep altogether—every day they keep them, they lose money. And when the vast majority of China’s producers quit, do you think imported beef and lamb will stay cheap?
Viewpoint 10: Forest-Burning on the Other Side of the Ocean Concerns Every Creature on Earth
As a pastoralist, I think the term “fake meat” is exceptionally precise—it captures exactly how they define “meat.” Especially when viewed from the standpoint of global food security, calling meat raised and force-grown through modern feed-processing technology “fake meat” is highly representative and carries real guidance in terms of food safety and health.
This is one example of how industrialisation and globalisation have impacted the lives of people on this Earth. The yak issue isn’t just about what meat you eat… the transformation of ways of life, the destruction of the ecological environment, and the reshaping of culture and history are all bound up in this.
Cheap “fake meat”? Or expensive “real meat”? Eat more of the cheap “fake meat”? Eat less of the expensive “real meat”? In truth, there are many choices. But as a pastoralist, a choice may need to account for the sustainability of one’s livelihood. As a consumer, it may need to account for the sustainability of well-being—health beyond the material, education, social relations, the environment, mental state, and so many more dimensions. —“Fake Meat” or “Real Meat”? What We Should Really Be Asking About Is Food Security
I don’t understand why you put yourself in the role of a consumer to look at this, and then go looking for excuses for that consumption. Imported beef encroaching on pastoralists’ livelihoods is a complex problem, and consumers and state policymakers together have created the status quo. Why can’t it be criticised?
I grew up in a pastoral area, eating meat since childhood. Our dietary habits are inherently different from those in farming areas—so are our tastes. This isn’t a matter of being unable to compete or just shouting complaints. It’s the issue of pastoralists as another group of ordinary people you don’t understand, whose living and working spaces are being devastated and who lack the means to resist.
(I am a) practitioner in agriculture and rural affairs. I believe the provincial government should consider whether pastoral livestock management can be standardised—offering quality testing, forming pastoral cooperatives, and so on. It’s arduous, but there are so many smallholders, scattered as they are, and they are the very foundation of the nation’s food security. They should not be abandoned.
Let me state responsibly: the value of the Tibetan yak has not disappeared—it simply needs to be recognised and re-evaluated in this new era. We should take economic, ecological and cultural factors together and drive the sustainable development of the yak industry.
Only by following nature’s laws and living in harmony with the natural world can humans stay truly healthy. Traditional nomadic pastoralism is the way of survival. Be grateful to nature; hold reverence in your heart.
I work in the agriculture sector. The author has done a brilliant job, and the analysis is spot-on. But I believe everything follows its own natural law—the karmic reckoning for Brazil and Argentina’s short-sighted policy of killing the chicken for its egg will surely come to pass before long.
On an emotional level, I feel great sympathy for the pastoralists, and the climate crisis is also desperately urgent. Land is disappearing in certain countries at a pace that can no longer be described as “slow”. Even if we turn a blind eye to what lies abroad, extreme weather events are becoming ever more frequent at home—this year alone, Liaoning saw grain yields drop because of drought. Forest-burning on the other side of the ocean concerns every single creature on this Earth. Buying “fake meat” is not only a blow to local pastoralists; it is also undermining the environment right around us. How can anyone say it has nothing to do with us?
Take pastoralism as an example: is intensification really the only way forward? The negative effects of intensive production are enormous. The environmental damage and the health risks that were ignored under the logic of treating the economy as the sole indicator—none of that has been addressed. Flip it around, and you will see that traditional pastoralism is both sustainable and green. If our market mechanisms and policy support fail to adjust in time, allowing products that better meet our modern needs in health, the environment, the economy and society to disappear while causing harm to producers—that is a failure of the system, not a pure issue of value orientation.
The essence of the problem with cheap meat products lies in negative externality—production inflicts profound damage on the environment and society, yet the cost of that damage is never factored into the price. Tradition, of course, should not be treated as an immutable inheritance, for it has always been shaped and reconstructed through history. Respecting tradition also means recognising its essence as something that co-evolves with the needs of the times. By contrast, climate change and ecological imbalance represent irreversible costs, and in the end everyone will pay the bill. Cheapness is nothing more than a surface appearance built on environmental and social costs that have never been internalised.
The article is excellent. It lays bare the complex lives shaped by the corporatisation of “capital” and by globalisation, revealing so many hidden threads that we begin to grasp how the smallest individual actions, accumulated, can become a roaring torrent that crushes everything in its path. These connections are real—we cannot pretend they are invisible. Anthropology is of course not about mourning the “old” while resisting the “new”; at its core, anthropology is about caring for the human condition. Whether or not we should adopt a “Big History” perspective, we must cast a caring glance towards the vulnerable in our lifeworld, rather than turning our eyes from the suffering of others.
