Middle East and North Africa Countries: The extent to which Brazilian beef companies, licensed to export to major MENA countries, demonstrate control over the suppliers to avoid deforestation in the Amazon

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries have become a strategic market for Brazilian beef. In 2025, exports to these countries reached US$1.79 billion, which is equivalent to approximately 10% of the total (US$18 billion) beef exported in 2025. (Times Brasil, 2026). This market gained further relevance in 2026, when MENA countries began to emerge as an alternative destination for part of the Brazilian beef that would otherwise have gone to China after the introduction of Chinese tariff quotas. The shift matters for two reasons. It helps Brazil diversify commercial risk, and it connects Middle East and North Africa food security more directly to the performance of the Brazilian beef supply chain. The importance of this trade is reinforced by the fact that several Middle Eastern buyers tend to import higher value-added cuts, which raises the economic weight of these markets for Brazilian exporters.

This commercial relevance comes with clear market requirements. In many MENA countries, halal certification is a basic condition for access to the beef market. It applies to slaughter, but it also extends to handling, packaging, transport, storage, and labeling. Therefore, the issue at stake is broader than religious compliance. MENA beef imports are shaped by standards, traceability, and trust in the integrity of the supply chain. Brazil already holds a leading position in halal meat exports, which creates an opportunity. At the same time, that position raises expectations that Brazilian suppliers will be able to demonstrate consistency between commercial expansion and credible socio-environmental safeguards.

This discussion becomes even more urgent in the context of food security in the Middle East and North Africa. Many countries in the region depend heavily on food imports and face structural constraints, including water scarcity, climate stress, and limited room to expand domestic agricultural production. In that context, climate change increases food security risks through both prices and availability. The effect is not restricted to crops. Recent evidence shows that warming tends to raise food prices, while the livestock literature indicates that heat stress reduces cattle weight gain, fertility, and productivity, and that drought lowers pasture quality while increasing feed, water, and animal health costs. Beef production can therefore become more expensive and less stable precisely when importing countries need a reliable supply. For food-importing regions, climate resilience in exporting countries is no longer a secondary concern. It is part of food security itself (IPCC, 2022; Kotz et al., 2024; Nardone et al., 2010; RojasDowning et al., 2017; Wheeler & von Braun, 2013).

In Brazil, this issue is even more consequential because cattle ranching is closely tied to the country’s emissions profile. Official Brazilian sources indicate that land use, land-use change and forestry remain the largest source of national greenhousegas emissions. In the federal Plano Clima for agriculture and livestock, 53.8% of gross emissions associated with the sectoral production sphere in 2022 came from land-use change in agricultural areas. In agriculture and livestock, enteric fermentation was the largest source of emissions, accounting for 65.0% of sector emissions, and methane from ruminant enteric fermentation came overwhelmingly from cattle. This pattern is consistent with land-use data from the Amazon: more than 90% of deforested areas in the biome had pasture as their first use. For that reason, curbing deforestation is not just a conservation objective. It is a necessary condition for reducing emissions in one of the main channels through which Brazilian cattle production affects climate stability and, by extension, food security (Ministério do Meio Ambiente e Mudança do Clima [MMA], 2025; Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação [MCTI], 2025; MapBiomas, 2024).

The link between deforestation and food security is not abstract. Research on Brazil shows that forest loss reduces rainfall and agricultural revenues in the Amazon and that deforestation-induced rainfall changes have already lowered soybean and maize yields. This means that the same process that expands emissions can also undermine the climatic conditions needed for agricultural production. The recent Brazilian experience adds a further warning. Climate extremes have intensified, with record heat, prolonged drought, and severe hydrological stress already affecting the country. In such a setting, the case for zero deforestation becomes stronger over time. It is a matter of climate mitigation, adaptation, and supply security at once (Leite-Filho et al., 2021; Batista et al., 2023; Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alertas de Desastres Naturais [Cemaden], 2026).

This is why market demand for sustainability matters. Studies show that zero deforestation is unlikely to be achieved by public policy alone or by voluntary market commitments in isolation. Progress depends on the combination of durable public policies, stronger incentives to raise productivity on already cleared land, greater transparency, and market restrictions against products associated with new deforestation. Brazilian experience also shows a clear temporal pattern. When enforcement and policy signals were stronger, deforestation fell sharply. When those signals weakened, deforestation rose again. That lesson is particularly relevant now, because climate shocks in Brazil are becoming more severe and because beef cattle represent the single largest activity in the Central Bank’s mapping of medium- and high-transition-risk exposure, totaling R$127 billion, or 32% of such exposures. A credible long-term commitment to zero deforestation, sustained across political cycles, is therefore increasingly important for the resilience and legitimacy of the beef sector (Barreto, 2021; Barreto et al., 2025; Banco Central do Brasil, 2022).

Against this background, this report assesses whether slaughterhouses licensed to export beef from the Brazilian Amazon to major MENA countries demonstrate robust socio-environmental safeguards. The analysis is based on the 2025 Radar Verde results, which evaluate the extent to which beef companies have adopted and implemented zerodeforestation policies capable of preventing direct and indirect links between exported beef and deforestation in the Amazon. By identifying which companies are more advanced in controlling their supply chains, the report contributes to a practical agenda: improving food security, reducing climate risk, and strengthening the credibility of Brazil-MENA beef trade.