How Did Imported “Fake Meat” End Up on the Tables of Tibetan and Qinghai Herders?
From Foodthink
Sangje, a sixty-year-old veteran herder, told us about his habits when it came to eating meat.
“Herders of my generation have a real meat craving. I suppose our diet looks bloody in your eyes. I often drink the fresh blood of a just-slaughtered yak or sheep while it’s still warm, eat sheep’s liver and gall bladder raw, and love the offal and stuffed intestines of cattle and sheep.”
Tibetans divide food into “white food” (དཀར་ཟས) and “red food” (དམར་ཟས)—the former corresponding to vegetarian fare, the latter to meat. But for herders, “white food” refers primarily to dairy products such as butter, dried curd, milk skin and yoghurt, while “red food” to herders means simply yak meat and Tibetan mutton. Traditionally, they relish meat but barely eat duck, fish, seafood or any other kind. Correspondingly, the traditional division of labour among herders also has two strands: “red work” (དམར་ལས), centred on slaughtering livestock, skinning, stuffing intestines and butchering, and “white work” (དཀར་ལས), centred on milking, churning butter and making yoghurt. The former is mainly men’s work; the latter, women’s.
The habits of eating meat that Sangje described were all from his younger days—the life he is proudest of. In those days he not only had meat to spare but often galloped alone across the grasslands. Once, in search of an old friend, he rode on horseback from Gansu to Qumalai County in Yushu, Qinghai—a journey of more than 1,000 kilometres. Speaking of those years, he was still full of vigour.
The reality, however, is that he has no cattle, no sheep, no horse, and none of his former dashing free spirit. He drives a sanitation truck in M County, Gansu—or, in his own words, ‘a rubbish truck.’ But he does love meat, and as we chatted, a plate of freshly boiled mutton sat on the table.
Unfortunately, this was not Tibetan mutton or yak meat he had slaughtered himself, but cheap imported meat from the market—New Zealand, Uruguayan, Brazilian, though it makes no difference. In herders’ parlance, it all goes by the same name—“fake meat” (ཤ་རྫུན).
I. “Fake Meat” in the County Town
From 1984 through the late 1990s, the Grassland Contracting Reform was progressively rolled out across the Tibetan and Qinghai pastoral regions, dividing collectively shared grasslands into individual household allotments. Sangje’s family received a steep, waterless stretch of pasture, and finding water for people and animals alike became the main hardship of his life on the grassland.
In the first two years after the allotment, every time Sangje needed to water his livestock, he had to cross through neighbours’ fenced pastures. Each day he spent more than two hours carrying water from the river back to his tent for the family to drink. Over time, this also created inconvenience for the adjacent herding households.
For Sangje, the custom of herding days had always been to eat beef and mutton he had slaughtered himself. Now, dishes or noodles made with “fake meat” are tolerable enough, but plain boiled imported meat not only fails to satisfy him—it actually triggers his meat craving, because to a herder’s palate the “meat flavour” of imported meat is far weaker than that of local meat. The saving grace is that the meat has no off smell and is just about edible—but to truly scratch that meat itch, you have to follow a mouthful of imported meat with a bite of the local stuff.
So he simply cooks the imported meat together with local lamb intestines and stomach-wrapped meat in one pot. At least by colour it’s hard to tell the imported meat apart. You can still taste the difference, but for Sangje this is the easiest way he can bring himself to eat it.
II. Cheap Imported Meat
As with Sangje, low prices are an important reason herders choose imported meat.
Tonpa, a herder from Deji Village in M County who used to serve as the village team leader, told us, ‘Last year (2023), a big truck came to town selling non-local meat. It looked very much like beef and mutton—one kind at 16 yuan per jin, another at 18 yuan per jin—while local meat at a butcher’s shop costs 30 yuan per jin. The price gap is huge.’ Although it was never labelled as imported, non-local meat priced below 20 yuan per jin can only be imported.
Ma Chuan, the shop owner, is ethnically Hui but speaks fluent Tibetan. He runs a grain-and-oil-and-meat shop in the busiest spot in X County’s town and has been dealing in imported beef for decades. He recalls that from 2014 to 2020, the New Zealand beef he regularly stocked had held steady at around 20–25 yuan per jin, 8–12 yuan per jin below the local retail price. Meanwhile, Sonam, who runs a Tibetan restaurant in a nearby tourist town specialising in all kinds of Tibetan noodles and meat dishes, told us that when he first opened in 2014, the gap between local and imported beef was 12–15 yuan per jin. Faced with such an overwhelming price advantage, every local eatery switched to imported meat. At the same time, many butcher shops too started trading in imported meat.
We visited 14 meat shops in M County and in X County—three hundred kilometres from M County—and pieced together a rough outline of the rise in imported meat sales locally: Imported meat first appeared in 2008, but volumes were still tiny, and many shops sold it without labelling it as imported, trading it instead under the name of local or feedlot-finished meat. Between 2016 and 2017, more and more people began buying and selling imported meat. From 2018 onwards, customers started distinguishing between cheap meat (imported meat) and local beef, and both the number of shops selling imported meat and its sales volume rose markedly.
Of the 31 beef and mutton shops in M County’s town, only 6 sell exclusively local grass-fed beef and mutton; every other shop also carries imported meat. In July 2024, the Natural Resource Management research group of the Department of Environmental Management at Peking University found during a survey in Qinghai Province that of the 11 butcher shops on Dehelong South Road in Huangnan Prefecture, only 3 sell exclusively local pasture-fed meat; the rest all carry imported meat.
Pasture-fed meat, as the name suggests, refers to livestock meat from animals that have gained weight on natural grasslands; it has nothing to do with breed. Both herders and cattle-and-sheep traders are accustomed to this term, which intuitively distinguishes animals fattened on grass from those fattened on feed and grain. In inland wet markets and shopping apps, however, this same meat is called grass-fed meat; compared to grain-fed meat raised on feed and grain, this label actually sounds more “inferior.”
Tibetan herders who, like Sangje, have given up pastoral production and settled in towns and cities are the principal individual consumers of imported meat in the pastoral regions. Across Qinghai Province, the settled formerly-nomadic population exceeds 500,000.
Herders still grazing in the pastoral regions also buy and eat imported beef and mutton. In a sample of 50 herding households in Z County, Qinghai, at least 32 households are currently buying and eating imported beef and mutton, spending an average of 7,106 yuan per household per year on it. Dorje, a herder from Sangqu Village whose family has lived by pastoralism for generations, says that although his household is rather traditional and only eats beef and mutton they have slaughtered themselves, the vast majority of other herders in the village buy imported meat in one way or another. Nowadays, it is commonplace for herders to buy meat.
III. “You Are a Meat-Eater, So You Must Accept the Fate of Taking Life”
Beyond the obvious price advantage, cultural factors have also been driving imported meat consumption in the Tibetan and Qinghai pastoral regions—namely, the influence of the extreme non-killing doctrine of Tibetan Buddhist sects centred on the Seda Wuming Academy, and the growing emotional reluctance among young pastoralists to slaughter livestock themselves. Sangje believes this runs counter to herders’ traditional customs and values:
“‘My winter meat each year is always local meat I have slaughtered myself. I am a traditional “herder.” When I kill cattle and sheep to sustain my life, I do not hesitate for a moment, because this is the way of life handed down through our generations—you are a meat-eater, so you must accept the fate of taking life. But today’s young people dare not take life; they will not even engage in “red work,” unable to stuff intestines or butcher meat.'”
At M County’s meat market, we not only saw herders from Seda in Sichuan driving more than 500 kilometres to buy meat, but also two young local herders who had just recently set up their own households buying mutton. They said it was local mutton—mainly because their families keep only yaks, so when they need mutton they have to buy it. Though they did not say they dared not kill, buying meat spares them the steps of slaughtering, skinning, and butchering at home, making things far easier and more convenient; so they prefer buying to slaughtering themselves.
Sangje represents the traditional eating habits and attitudes towards taking life held by herders, and he is dissatisfied with the current reluctance of young people to slaughter. In his eyes, this is what herders are: one hand drenched in the blood of cattle and sheep, the other turning prayer beads, chanting sutras and praying for the departed creatures. They know deep down that this is life’s inevitable paradox—good and evil have always travelled side by side.
According to Tibetan tradition, to ensure each animal’s death is not in vain, herders make full use of every part. The meat, offal, and intestines are necessarily eaten—and eaten cleanly. From a young age, herders’ children are taught: “The cleaner you pick the bones, the more beautiful you will be in your next life.” Sheepskins become fur coats, fur trousers, felt, and hide bags; cowhides are made into leather ropes, boots, and hide rafts; sheep horns, yak horns, and bones are turned into spoons, scabbards, knife handles, toys, and containers.
Although he gave up pastoralism and moved to the county town more than twenty years ago, Sangje still keeps his traditional herder’s skills. He always stresses that the value of livestock lies not only in their meat but also in their hides, wool, dung, bones, and milk.
IV. The Singular Market
Diverse livestock products mean diversified income.
The anthropologist Gele and colleagues recorded the historical wool trade of Nagqu in their monograph Nomads of Northern Tibet. Before the 1950s, wool was not only one of the region’s major pastoral industries but also the single largest export commodity in Tibet’s entire external trade. The seven major tribes of Nagqu produced 1.8–2 million jin of wool a year, shipped as far as South Asia and Europe. Comprehensive, diversified pastoral products are the bedrock of traditional grassland pastoralism in the Tibetan and Qinghai regions.
Yet the reality today is that the income herders derive from livestock products has become increasingly singular.
In Deji Village, M County, Gansu Province, herders have in recent years taken to raising only yaks; the sight of sheep on the grassland is growing ever rarer. Watching the livestock structure shift from the traditional three animals (yaks, Tibetan sheep and horses) to a single species, team leader Tonpa cannot hide his worry.
‘In the old days we used to say, “Black-headed herders rely on black cattle; black yaks rely on the grassland” (མགོ་ནག་བརྟེན་ས་སྤུ་ནག སྤུ་ནག་བརྟེན་ས་སྤང་དཀར།). In Tibetan, yak is Nor (ནོར)—meaning treasure or wealth—and herders have lived by yaks for centuries. Yaks not only meet every need of our daily lives—food, clothing, housing and transport—but have also brought us considerable economic returns. Herders used to sell not just live animals, but yak down, sheep’s wool, yak hair, sheepskins, cowhides, and all manner of dairy products. Now butter and chura (dried milk residue) can still just about be sold, but the other products have lost all economic value. Ten years ago, a single sheepskin fetched 50–100 yuan and a cowskin 150–200 yuan; now no one even comes to buy hides. A kilogram of wool sells for 5 or 6 yuan—not even enough to cover the cost of shearing. Herders’ income has become painfully singular: it depends entirely on selling live livestock (bringing animals to market).’
In a modernised, meat-oriented, singular market, the yak has not only lost its traditional cultural meaning and functional value; its economic value too has been reduced to a single dimension: today a herder’s standard of living is determined by how many yaks he brings to market, the worth of a single yak is measured solely by how much meat it yields, and the price per jin of meat is set by the market—with no say whatsoever for the herders.
V. “Fake Meat” Drives Out Real Meat
Every September and October, herders in Gannan Prefecture return from their higher-altitude summer pastures to lower-lying autumn grazing grounds, preparing for winter. It is at this point that they bring to market the animals they need to cull or replace, adjusting the size and composition of their herds to the optimal level ahead of the cold season.
There are two options for selling livestock: contact a middleman colloquially called a “reseller” who will come to the farm to buy, or drive the cattle and sheep to the abattoir yourself. Given transport costs and the communication barriers with the abattoir, the vast majority of herders choose to wait for the resellers to come.
Since 2020, however, livestock prices in the pastoral regions have been on a sustained downward slide, and the market has slumped. Unable to earn a margin, the resellers come less and less frequently, and many herders have to rush to trading markets to sell off their cattle and sheep cheaply—the more urgent the need for cash, the lower the price they accept.
In September 2024, we visited the livestock trading market in M County. The yard was already packed with herders’ vehicles laden with cattle and sheep; resellers and abattoir agents had gathered to buy. After asking around, we learned that this year a mature female yak over five years old could fetch only 3,500–6,000 yuan, whereas in 2019, when the market was at its peak, the same animal sold for 10,000–13,000 yuan. Over five years, the price had fallen by an average of 1,000 yuan per year.
According to the Gannan Prefecture Statistical Yearbook, in purely pastoral counties, income from selling live livestock accounts for up to 70% of a herding family’s total household income. The sustained fall in livestock prices has posed an enormous challenge to herders’ livelihoods.
Not bringing livestock to market means another year of upkeep, yet the carrying capacity of natural grasslands is limited—animals that miss the season require additional purchase of feed and forage, or renting of extra grazing land. The proportion of herders’ production expenditure spent on feed and forage rises year on year, and to recoup costs, the number of animals that must be sold each year keeps growing. Driven by the meat market, today’s herders are locked into a cycle of high input and high turnover, yet high income has not followed.
In X County, we observed the household of Tashi and his wife, who have a son of about ten. The three of them, however, hold grazing rights to just 350 mu of grassland—nowhere near enough to sustain their 50 cattle and 230 sheep—so each year they must rent in additional pasture (50,000 yuan a year) and buy feed and forage (55,000 yuan a year) to keep the herd. Tashi says, ‘If we had fewer animals, the operation would be simply unviable, but the price of feed and forage keeps climbing while cattle and sheep prices have fallen year after year, and the cost of grazing goes up and up.’ In 2023, Tashi’s livestock sales brought in just 90,000 yuan—barely covering the cost of keeping the animals, let alone a family’s living expenses. To keep going, he took out a loan of 300,000 yuan. Beyond survival on borrowed money, he has no other option.
Over more than twenty years of marketisation, grassland pastoralism has gradually been reduced to a single production space shaped by the meat market. In the past, a herder was also a butcher, a leather worker, a bone carver, a rope maker, a felt maker—a craftsman and the master of his own life, a producer and a consumer both.
Today, herders sell their herds in droves to the market, and all they get back from it is imported meat called “fake meat” and a pittance that can barely sustain a life.
VI. Imported Beef in China
Tonpa, who still grazes livestock in the pastoral regions, rarely eats imported meat. But as someone who sells cattle, he feels the persistent slide in local cattle purchase prices has something to do with the flood of cheap imported meat. ‘A few days ago I needed some cash, so I contacted a butcher I know and tried to sell him a cow in absolutely prime condition. I showed him a video and asked what he’d pay. He agreed the animal was superb quality, but the price he offered fell completely short of my expectations. Lots of people in the village say the cheap frozen meat sold in town has been dragging down local livestock prices, and I’m rather inclined to agree.’
Although imported meat only appeared in M County’s butcher shops in 2008, China’s frozen beef imports date back to 1992. Twenty years later, imported meat first gathered momentum in the Chinese market.
From April to December 2012, domestic beef prices rose 35% year on year, driven by shrinking herds and declining slaughter volumes, with a kilogram of beef shank selling for as much as 120 yuan. As domestic beef prices soared, Australian beef began flooding the Chinese market. Australian beef imports, which had totalled fewer than 3,000 tonnes across the whole of 2011, reached 27,200 tonnes in 2012.
2018 marked the second surge in imported beef entering the Chinese market. Since 2018, China has actively expanded its “circle of friends” in beef trade, gradually granting market access to ten more countries—including Argentina, Uruguay, Panama and Bolivia—bringing the cumulative number of approved countries to 27. That year, import volumes surged again, with annual cumulative imports exceeding one million tonnes.
Between 2015 and 2023, imported beef volumes grew from 470,000 tonnes to 2.74 million tonnes, while China’s beef self-sufficiency rate fell from 92.9% to 73%. Since 2021, 42% of all imported beef in China’s market has come from Brazil, making it the country’s largest beef import supplier.
According to the 2023 financial report of JBS Group, Brazil’s largest meat-processing company, the group’s export revenue that year reached $18.4 billion, with 25.4% of its products destined for China. During our fieldwork, we found that Friboi and GJ products—both subsidiaries of JBS Group—are widely available across the pastoral regions.
Herders in Gannan Prefecture simply cannot fathom why Brazilian beef—travelling more than 16,000 kilometres from the other side of the globe to reach their tables—should be so much cheaper than local meat. In 2024, the average price of imported beef was 34 yuan per kilogram; even adding transport and distribution costs, this falls far below the roughly 68 yuan per kilogram wholesale price on China’s domestic market.
The 2022 Brazil Beef Cattle Report proudly declares that Brazil’s vast grassland area is a key resource advantage for beef cattle farming—the country boasts 163 million hectares of grassland and 7,000 hectares of integrated agricultural-pastoral land, together accounting for approximately 27.3% of Brazil’s total territory. Such extensive grassland resources, combined with a stable climate, constitute Brazil’s natural endowment for livestock development.
These quality natural resources also yield cheap feed crops such as maize and soybeans, widening the profit margins of Brazil’s intensive farming operations. According to the report, over the twenty years from 2001, the number of cattle raised through intensive farming within Brazil’s total slaughter rose from 2.06 million to 6.73 million head—more than tripled, far outpacing the 20% growth in total slaughter. Meanwhile, the proportion of cattle over three years old at the time of slaughter dropped from 47% in 2001 to 11% in 2021. Beyond this, Brazil’s entire beef cattle supply chain is almost entirely controlled by processors headed by JBS Group. From purchasing, rearing and fattening through to slaughter, sale and export, every step can be completed within a single group. Lower friction costs give processors the profit margin to undercut rivals on export prices in international markets while still reaping fat profits.
The lowering of slaughter ages, the intensification of production, the supply chain dominated by large capital groups, and the vast natural pastures as a foundation—all have given Brazilian beef exports the leverage to sweep the globe in recent years and invade the Chinese market. Yet what Brazilian processors never mention is that the “natural cattle ranches” they tout are, in the vast majority, the product of illegally burnt rainforest.
VII. Deforestation for Cattle Ranching Across the Ocean
From the 1960s onwards, the Brazilian government partnered with private enterprises to grant or sell vast tracts of Amazon rainforest land at low prices to farmers and plantation workers from the south, for cattle ranching and the cultivation of feed maize and soybeans. Data from IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) show that, from the 1970s to the present, as beef consumption has risen both at home and abroad, Brazil’s cattle herd has doubled in size, with the growth coming almost entirely from the Amazon region.
Clearing forests and converting them to pasture was driven both by government policy and by local choice. In Rainforest Cowboys, anthropologist Jeffrey Hoelle traces the Amazon’s gradual transition from an economy dependent on forest resources (such as rubber tapping) to large-scale cattle ranching, finding that in Acre State, in Brazil’s western rainforest region, the cattle industry brought economic returns, social status, and a new cultural identity. In terms of land use and economic reward, clearing forest and opening pasture is widely seen as a mark of “progress” and “hard work”, while leaving forest intact is often branded “lazy” or “backward”. Cowboys are cast as decisive, progressive rural heroes, in sharp contrast to the “backward and poor” rubber tappers or smallholder farmers (caipira). This has led many residents of Acre not to see forest preservation as necessary—they even feel that government and environmental organisations have curtailed their way of life and their economic opportunities. They often invoke America’s westward expansion, believing that in the Amazon they should be free to settle and push outward, as in America’s early days, rather than being told to “protect the forest”.
Using “traditional slash-and-burn” as a pretext, they set the Amazon rainforest ablaze, seizing the land beneath the canopy—yet nature, too, has struck back at those who “steal” the land. The Amazon was once renowned for its extraordinary resistance to fire: the damp canopy meant that natural fires within the forest were often separated by centuries, sometimes millennia. However, the climate change wrought by deforestation and burning—rising temperatures and drought driven by global warming—has turned man-made fires into uncontrollable wildfires that consume everything in their path. In 2024, approximately 37.42 million acres of Amazon land—equivalent to the area of nine Beijings—were burned. Forests, buildings, roads, and indigenous homes are going up in flames and turning to ash.
Clearing forests for cattle not only turns trees from carbon sinks that capture CO₂ into carbon sources that release it; the subsequent intensive crop and livestock production on cleared land also emits enormous quantities of greenhouse gases. The first comprehensive carbon assessment of Brazilian beef, published in 2011, found that producing one kilogram of meat emits 103 kilograms of CO₂—three times the emissions of European industrial farming. As the largest importer of Brazilian beef, China was linked in 2020 to approximately 494,000 hectares of cattle-driven deforestation in Brazil, equivalent to 1% of the country’s total forest area.
JBS, Brazil’s largest meat processor, is a major culprit in deforestation. Despite pressure from Greenpeace and other organisations, JBS Group committed as early as 2009 to stop sourcing cattle from deforested ranches or ranches encroaching on indigenous community lands, yet Brazil’s forest monitoring agency has found that, up to this year, JBS continues to purchase large numbers of cattle from deforested ranches and to buy maize, soybeans, and other crops from deforested farms for fattening feed.
The web of interests forged between this livestock giant and Brazil’s small farms and ranchers is churning out meat products that are cheap but carry an enormous environmental cost. The butcher shops of the Tibetan and Qinghai pastoral regions have long since plugged into the global market: income that should have remained in local herders’ hands now flows, via imported beef and mutton, into the pockets of Brazilian meat traders.
VIII. Feedlot-Finished Meat of Worrying Quality
Farming methods directly determine meat quality. Whether it is feedlot-finished meat—animals raised in pens and fed on formulated feed—a discerning herder can tell at the first taste. By comparison, yaks grazed on natural pastures get plenty of exercise, so their meat has coarser fibres, a firmer texture, and a tight, satisfying chew. The meat of yaks raised in the high-altitude cold differs markedly from other types of beef in nutritional composition, protein and fat content: its average protein level is notably higher than that of yellow cattle, and it contains more amino acids, richer unsaturated fatty acids, and more trace elements.
A growing body of research confirms that the grass-fed beef herders describe as “chewy” is also nutritionally superior. US nutrition scientist Kate Clancy conducted a comprehensive comparison of the nutritional profiles of grass-fed and grain-fed beef. She pointed out that grass-fed cattle deposit less fat in their bodies and contain specific fatty acids beneficial to human health, such as omega-3 fatty acids, which can significantly help prevent cardiovascular disease. In purely grass-fed cattle, omega-3 fatty acid levels can reach as high as 3%, while continuous pen-feeding in confinement steadily drives those levels down.
Furthermore, because herders’ yaks forage on a wide variety of plants across natural grasslands, their bodies also carry higher levels of phytonutrients—terpenoids, phenols, carotenoids and antioxidants—all of which contribute to improved human health.
Yet in the tide of marketisation, health is never the priority; low price or profit margin always comes first.
Feedlot operators, slaughterhouse owners and meat-processing plant managers active across the Tibetan and Qinghai pastoral regions highly value the nutritional worth of natural pasture-fed yak meat, conceding that no other meat can compare. But they also keenly recognise that grazing on natural pastures is both an advantage and a weakness.
In winter, heavy snow buries the grassland. Cattle and sheep that have grown plump and well-fattened on the lush spring and summer pastures begin to lose weight as feed intake drops and energy expenditure rises. By April or May of the following year, as the weather warms and grass starts to regrow, the animals enter a new growth phase. But on open natural grasslands, the frequency and volume of feeding are never constant, and the forage available is never certain, so weight gain and fattening efficiency on pasture is considered very low.
Feedlot operators have found a business opportunity in this very “uncertainty.” They buy yaks from herders, haul them to concentrated feeding bases, and fatten them on carefully formulated rations—not only massively increasing the animals’ weight but also rendering the meat more tender.
Clearly, whether at home or abroad, livestock raised on natural pastures cannot escape the feedlot in the end. Boss Ma, who owns two feedlot bases with a combined capacity to finish 10,000 yaks simultaneously, told us, “When the cattle first arrive, they refuse to eat the feed. You have to increase the amount gradually over the first month, essentially resetting their digestive system entirely. From the second month on, they can put on over a kilogram a day.” Setting aside the first month, in which no weight is gained, a yak needs six to ten months to go from an initial 300 kilograms to 600. Once the animal is so fat that it can no longer move its neck or legs, the finishing is essentially complete.
This feedlot-finished beef not only supplies the vast inland market but also seeps into every corner of the Tibetan and Qinghai pastoral regions, joining the army of imported meat to hammer the price and market access of natural pasture-fed yak.
Compared with Brazil, herders on the Tibetan Plateau have no vast, generous grasslands, no stable climate or rainfall. Instead, they endure the harshest environment on earth, constantly adapting to nature, guarding a thin strip of land that barely sustains their livelihoods. They sit at the very bottom of the pastoral beef-and-mutton market, yet they bring to that market yak meat—free-ranging, nutrient-rich, raised on open natural pastures. But after passing through the hands of middlemen, feedlot operators, slaughterhouses and a chain of other interested parties, the yak meat that reaches the final consumer is feedlot-finished meat of worrying quality.
IX. Depreciating Gold
According to data from the National Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Bureau, since 2022, both beef prices and live cattle prices across China have been on a steady downward slide. As of September 2024, the national average price of live cattle stood at 25.46 yuan per kilogram, and the national average beef price at 68.2 yuan per kilogram—the lowest in five years—while the average price of imported beef was still under 35 yuan per kilogram, retaining a clear price advantage.
At this average price, a herder in X County, Gannan Prefecture, can earn only around 6,500 yuan for each not feedlot-finished mature yak weighing approximately 250 kilograms that he brings to market, against rearing costs of roughly 1,500 yuan (excluding the ecological cost of natural grassland grazing and labour costs). Selling around ten yaks each year is required just to meet a family’s living needs, which, for an average household in X Village owning only 20–30 yaks, is tantamount to liquidating their entire worldly possessions.
The low-price race to the bottom has pushed current grassland pastoralism and herders’ livelihoods to the very front line of risk. Accept losses and sell quickly, or sink more into rearing costs and wait for prices to recover? Faced with this dilemma, every herder we met had no idea what to choose.
We encountered Nima at the livestock trading market in M County; he had already been waiting there for two days, trying to sell his three yaks.
Nima’s family once numbered five, with more than sixty yaks. In 2021 he took out a loan of 150,000 yuan to expand his herd, putting the remainder towards medical expenses and household spending. As cattle prices kept falling, his income from selling animals shrank year by year until he could simply no longer service the debt. When the loan matured in 2022, the court compulsorily seized all of his subsidies and his wages as a grassland ranger. In 2023, crushed by debt, Nima divorced; he now lives with his two sons, keeps 39 yaks and two horses, and the loan is still unpaid. Yet when asked whether he eats imported meat, he answered:
“I only eat yak meat and Tibetan mutton. I never buy feedlot-finished meat or imported beef and mutton. ‘Fake meat’ doesn’t just taste bad—it’s ruining our lives as herders, it’s gutting the market for our local beef and mutton. I refuse to eat it, and I refuse to buy it.” In the face of brutal reality, Nima clings to the last shred of stubbornness a herder has left.
Nima’s plight is that of herders everywhere, yet most of them say nothing. Today’s herders are caught in an impossible bind: keeping cattle and sheep they cannot sell, with no income to live on; unable to afford the very meat they raise, yet having to make do with cheap imports.
This compels the question: how has the yak—called Nor (ནོར) in Tibetan, meaning treasure or wealth—depreciated to such an extent? Is it that the yak has truly lost its worth, or has the standard by which we measure value itself shifted? Is industrialised livestock farming the final destination? And in the vast commercialised market, is there room for a single healthy meat product?
(All place names and personal names in this article are pseudonyms.)
JBS Group financial reports: https://ri.jbs.com.br/en/financial-information/results-center/
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