Pará is requiring double ear tags — a visible number and an electronic chip — to trace the movements of about 20 million cattle and help detect deforestation tied to pasture expansion. The program phases in next year for transported animals and reaches all cattle by 2027, with the government subsidizing tags for small farms and industry contributions such as JBS donating 2 million tags. Authorities will cross-check movement records against satellite imagery and Indigenous territory maps, but experts warn that enforcement and anti-fraud measures are essential to stop sophisticated illegal operations. Support from ranchers and meatpackers offers industry momentum, while targeted oversight aims to exclude criminal actors from the supply chain.
Pará’s New Double Ear-Tag System Aims to Trace Cattle and Slow Amazon Deforestation
Pará is requiring double ear tags — a visible number and an electronic chip — to trace the movements of about 20 million cattle and help detect deforestation tied to pasture expansion. The program phases in next year for transported animals and reaches all cattle by 2027, with the government subsidizing tags for small farms and industry contributions such as JBS donating 2 million tags. Authorities will cross-check movement records against satellite imagery and Indigenous territory maps, but experts warn that enforcement and anti-fraud measures are essential to stop sophisticated illegal operations. Support from ranchers and meatpackers offers industry momentum, while targeted oversight aims to exclude criminal actors from the supply chain.
Belém, Brazil — In the northeastern reaches of the Amazon, the state of Pará is rolling out a mandatory ear-tagging program for cattle designed to trace animals across their lifetimes and help detect deforestation tied to pasture expansion. Ranchers like Maria Gorete, who began raising cattle three years ago near Novo Repartimento, have begun placing two tags in each animal's ears: a visible numbered tag and an electronic chip that links to an official government database.
How the tagging works
Each animal's visible number and electronic ID record the animal's birth location, dates, owner, breed and movement history. From next year, any cattle being transported within Pará must carry tags, and by 2027 all cattle in the state — including animals born on local ranches — are required to be tagged. Tags are designed to break if removed to reduce fraud, and owners and buyers must log movements and transactions.
Authorities can cross-check registered locations against satellite imagery and maps of Indigenous territories to flag suspicious movements or past deforestation. With roughly 20 million head of cattle in Pará, the system is ambitious: it aims to link individual animal histories to land-use data so that illegally cleared areas used for pasture can be detected and traced back through the supply chain.
Industry support and costs
The government will fund tags for farms with 100 head or fewer; larger ranches pay their own costs. Tags currently cost under 9 Brazilian reals (about US$1.70) each, and JBS — the world’s largest meatpacker — has donated 2 million tags to support the rollout. Producers who want to sell into markets that demand verified supply chains may benefit from the added traceability.
Enforcement challenges
Conservationists and industry representatives say the tagging program is a major step forward, but not a silver bullet. Marina Piatto of Imaflora warns that illegal operations persist because they can be cheaper and easier to run, and Christian Poirier of Amazon Watch notes that well-funded criminal networks have sometimes evaded earlier measures. Officials say anti-fraud systems and targeted enforcement — for example, flagging farms that report implausibly large sales relative to their size — are central to making the program effective.
'The only solution is individual cattle traceability because then you can know for each movement where that cattle has been and if it has been in a place that has been deforested in the past,' said José Otavio Passos, Brazilian Amazon director at The Nature Conservancy.
Ranchers already experienced with tagging, like Mauro Lucio of Paragominas, say the transition is manageable. Many small producers also view traceability as a market opportunity that 'adds value' to their animals and opens access to buyers demanding clean supply chains. Yet experts emphasize sustained enforcement, cross-sector cooperation, and anti-fraud protections will be critical to prevent determined actors from bypassing the rules.
Context: Brazil has lost an estimated 339,685 square kilometers (131,153 square miles) of mature rainforest since 2001, an area roughly the size of Germany; more than a third of that loss occurred in Pará, according to Global Forest Watch. The tagging program is one of several measures aimed at curbing deforestation and making supply chains more transparent as governments, industry and NGOs coordinate efforts.