LINS, Brazil -- With 3,500 workers slaughtering and processing an at-capacity 1,100 cows a day, you might think the owners of the Bertin Ltda. plant would have all the work they could handle.
Instead, the company would like to expand -- but it is cramped by import restrictions that keep raw Brazilian beef out of U.S. grocery stores and restaurants.
"We are exporting our beef to all other major markets in the world," said Bertin sales manager Dominic MacDermot. "Why is it that we are being penalized by the Americans?"
Bertin is just one of many companies that are helping transform Brazil into a competitive agricultural giant, and that support its role as a hard-line leader in the push for better global trade terms for developing countries.
Key talks on forming a 34-nation Free Trade Area of the Americas will take place in Miami next week, but may go nowhere because of differences over trade rules on grain, fruit, beef and other farm products. Other nations want the United States to reduce or eliminate subsidies, quotas, tariffs and other barriers that protect American farmers.
Disputes over agriculture were key to the collapse of a round of world trade talks in Mexico in September. Brazil was Latin America's leader in a group of poorer nations that opposed the U.S. and European positions in that meeting.
U.S. officials want agricultural issues for the FTAA decided by the World Trade Organization and its 146 member nations. But Brazil, which is co-chairing the FTAA talks with the U.S., doesn't want to wait for a WTO solution and is threatening to take off the bargaining table issues such as investment and intellectual property rights -- both high priorities for American companies.
For Brazil and other developing countries, it makes no sense to create the world's largest free trade zone and open their markets to rich developed countries like the United States unless they can get access for their own booming agricultural exports.
"If you can't point to success on the agricultural front, Brazilians are going to say, 'What kind of globalization is this?'"said Stephen Haber, a Latin American expert at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Blessed by a forgiving climate, cheap land, low-cost labor and advanced farming techniques, Brazil is already the top producer of coffee, sugar and orange juice and is poised to become the world's biggest soybean and beef exporter.
Its potential to become an even bigger agricultural player is undisputed. A fifth of the world's arable land lies in Brazil, where water is plentiful and farms are surprisingly sophisticated, a far cry from the rudimentary slash-and-burn operations foreigners imagine they would find in the developing frontier.
"Brazil has this endowment of really good farmland and they are taking advantage of it," Haber said. "The image a lot of people have of Brazilian agriculture is just big companies or peasants, but many farmers there are what we in America would call family farmers."
Bertin, the country's biggest beef exporter, slaughters 1.2 million cattle a year in Lins and three other plants. It ships meat to Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The company is the top employer in Lins, a town of 60,000 about four hours by highway from Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city. It also is the main economic force for the region, home to small and large cattle ranches and sugarcane farms.
Inside Bertin's massive 10-building complex, workers in white uniforms and rubber boots methodically trim and cut beef, pausing only to sharpen their knives. Nothing is wasted: Fat becomes the old-fashioned laundry bar soap used in every Brazilian household; intestines are turned into casings for export to sausage makers.
Bertin does make $40 million worth of corned beef and other cooked beef products for shipment to the United States yearly. Bertin products appear on supermarket shelves under the Hormel, Libby and Hereford brands.
Although American meat sanitary rules permit the cooked beef exports, U.S. regulators haven't approved Brazil's moves toward ensuring its raw beef is fit for consumption.
Brazilians say the U.S. position is an unfair trade barrier, pointing out that Europe has been importing Brazilian beef for years. After Chile, Bertin's top raw beef export destinations are Germany, England, Italy and Holland.
Overall, Brazil produces 13 percent of the world's beef -- sending $1.4 billion in annual exports to 80 countries. The country has the largest commercial cattle herd in the world, and slaughters 33 million head yearly.
Even if the United States buckles and agrees that Brazilian beef is safe for U.S. consumers, the country's beef processors would face another hurdle: Import quotas that restrict the amount of beef foreign countries can send to America. For many Brazilians, there is no reason to proceed with FTAA negotiations unless the quotas are lifted.
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