I can see two reasons: maybe it is not cheaper, or maybe there's not enough for local consumers. There should definitely be some economic incentive somewhere.
Higher quality is debatable, foreign imports are not necessarily "lower quality", I'm a Brazilian so I'm on the other side of the coin, our beef is anything but low quality. The problem that the article wants to expose is that much of it is raised on illegal ranches, more often than not on the deflorested Amazon.
Being local is not something that food chains care about.
Doubtful that the mass ranched cattle is raised to the same quality standards as in America, especially if they know their beef is going to fast food. Ex. Grass fed, hormone-free
Also I understand what the article points out about illegal ranches supplying corporations but Who eats the food from the food chains?
This is why I mentioned the word debatable. Brazil has high-quality standards for cattle; I specifically live in an agribusiness state in Brazil (very far away from the Amazon, although still having ecological problems). The absolute majority of cattle here are raised in free-range being grass-fed, without any hormones, and this is exactly the problem, free-ranging demands a lot of land, and ultimately this land is being made by cutting down old-growth forests.
Let's not make assumptions about quality when we don't have enough information from each country to make an educated guess. I will point out that Brazil is the largest exporter of agricultural products in the West, and we comply with very demanding markets, including the US. The problem being cited is not about quality—we are compliant with the FDA—but the ethics of ranging cattle in previously Amazon forests
Right I never said it was about quality. I asked why an American would buy exported beef and quality obviously is a factor in a buying decision. Quality has to be proven, something that is difficult to understand and prove when the product is an export.
I am asking a different question than what is demonstrated by the article, intentionally.
Because it’s cheaper for Mc’Donalds and Burger King but probably not for the average consumer. Grocery store beef quality has gone down after Covid except Prime grade and local butchers $$$.
For context, I've known that McDonald's uses rain forest beef since the mid-1980s when my dad first told me about it. I thought they stopped that for a while, but nope:
Nothing has been done to stop it because of a number of cultural problems: 1) Americans love beef: "why would I eat what food eats?" 2) America could stop all conflict around the world, from deforestation to war to civil rights abuses, if that wasn't directly at odds with the appetites of our capitalist empire and 3) scarcity mindset for survival has so dominated the Global South for so long that nature is seen as a resource to be exploited, far below even the dignity of human life, due to unrelenting debt pressure from the IMF to create a wage slave class for harvesting cash crops and labor/resource-intensive commodities like beef.
It's not hard to understand: It's affordable, culturally acceptable, the taste is appealing to the palate, it's an easy source of protein, people are disengaged to know the details of the supply chain and as such don't really engage on discussing the ethics of modern meat production.
You can also push a concession out of most normal people that it's unethical, in person. Only online do people act like it's not an elephant in everyone's room—just one that we don't think about unless scrolling past a documentary or something. It's just incredibly hard to red pill out of the comforts you were born into.
Why would they care, when they can't see the animal suffering in front of their nose? When it's just something abstract in the newspapers sometimes, and it's more fun to watch Netflix or hang out with friends than read more about that?
