Cattle are traded through complex global supply chains. Animals may be born, raised and finished on different properties before reaching a slaughterhouse, making their full history difficult to verify. This can disadvantage responsible farmers. They carry the cost of good land management, record-keeping and traceability, while cattle with weaker or unsupported origin claims may compete for the same buyers.

Brazil shows why better verification matters

The challenge is global, but its environmental consequences are particularly clear in Brazil, where cattle production is the single largest driver of deforestation in the Amazon. Trase, a research partnership that maps the environmental impacts of global commodity supply chains, found that pasture expansion for cattle farming and land speculation is Brazil’s largest direct driver of deforestation and conversion. Its analysis also shows that risk is highly concentrated. In 2020, 388 of Brazil’s 3,386 cattle-producing municipalities accounted for 95% of cattle-related deforestation. At the same time, nearly 3,000 lower-risk municipalities produced 58% of the country’s beef. This distinction matters. Cattle production should not be treated as equally risky everywhere, and farmers operating responsibly should have a credible way to demonstrate it.

Why records may not tell the whole story

Many traceability systems work well for cattle bought directly by a slaughterhouse. The greater difficulty is establishing where animals were born and raised before reaching the final supplying farm. When cattle move through several properties, earlier stages of their history can be difficult to follow. Buyers may therefore struggle to distinguish credible production from cattle whose origins have not been fully verified. Records remain essential, but an independent source of evidence could make those systems stronger.

Making responsible production easier to prove

World Forest ID is developing a scientific method that could help verify where cattle were raised. The approach compares chemical signals in water, grass and feed from known farms with signals found in cattle hair, meat and skin. These data can be used to build an origin model against which the claimed origin of beef, leather and collagen products can be evaluated. The science is intended to complement farm records and animal movement documents, not replace them. It could give farmers and buyers additional evidence to support credible origin claims and distinguish responsible production from unverified supply.

Building shared verification infrastructure

Reliable origin testing depends on reference samples from different production regions, laboratory analysis and scientific models. These are shared foundations that no individual farmer or buyer should be expected to build alone. Support from governments, philanthropy, research institutions and industry can help make this infrastructure available across markets, including to smaller producers and less well-resourced supply chains. Over time, stronger origin verification could help responsible farmers protect market access, help buyers recognise credible production and direct greater scrutiny towards genuinely higher-risk supply. The objective is not simply to identify poor practice. It is to create a global cattle market in which responsible production is easier to recognise, verify and reward.

This cattle traceability project is supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.