Rio de Janeiro – Cattle slaughter in Brazil in 2012 was the highest since 2007 and up 8% from 2011, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) reported this Wednesday (27th). The institute names bearish domestic and international prices and bullish exports as the main factors that caused slaughtering to increase to 31.118 million heads of cattle, exceeding the 30.713 million recorded five years earlier.
Also, bovine slaughtering in the fourth quarter of 2012 was the highest since records started being kept, in 1997, at 8.186 million animals. The quarterly figure was up 1.7% from the three preceding months, and up 11.1% from the last quarter of 2011.
Despite the nationwide increase last year, slaughtering was down in the Northeast (-0.3%), caused mostly by a 24.5% decline in the state of Pernambuco and a 11.5% decline in the state of Ceará. Slaughtering in the Midwest was up by 1.4 million heads of cattle, and the region’s share in overall slaughtering went from 36.5% to 38.5%. As a result, the shares of other regions dropped, even though slaughtering has increased: North (up 220,072), Southeast (up 413,799) and South (up 191,621).
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
