175 million tonnes of meat lost in Brazil's truck strike

Brazilian truckers, protesting against fuel prices that have increased by around 50% in the last year, brought the country to a standstill in just nine days. Their strike and blockade all but closed the Port of Santos, the biggest container port in South America, and neither export nor import containers could reach port terminals.

With both imports and exports frozen at the country’s main ports the poultry and meat industry was thrown into turmoil.

Brazil is the world’s largest poultry producer and exporter but its chicken exports couldn’t get out and feed couldn’t get in. The Brazilian Association for Animal Protein (ABPA) informed its members last Sunday that 170 poultry and pork processing plants were halted and 234,000 workers were ordered to go home and wait for the resumption of the production flow.

Lack of sufficient feed resulted in the culling of 70 million chickens and ABPA estimated that the country had lost 120,000 tonnes in potential poultry exports due to the truckers’ protest. Poultry industry losses are already claimed to total AU$462 million.

Perishables rotted away in many trucks that were stuck at the full-to-bursting port facilities, where trucks couldn’t get in or out. Nearly 4000 trucks of beef were left sitting on roadsides according to the beef packer trade group ABIEC. Only two of Brazil’s 109 beef processing plants continued to operate and even those plants were working at half their capacity.

National beef industry association ABIEC said the sector lost 40 million metric tons of beef exports, equivalent to AU$225 million in revenues.

The Brazilian meat industry was prevented from exporting 175 million metric tons of meat products since a truckers’ strike began blocking highways around the country on 21 May, according to data from industry associations ABPA and ABIEC.

Total losses from animal mortality, lost sales and other costs related to the strike are estimated at over BRL3 billion (AU$1.06 bn) by the poultry and pork meat industry, and between BRL8 billion and BRL10 billion (AU$2.84 bn to $3.55 bn) by the beef sector.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Kagenmi