January 2026 was meant to be when the government of the Brazilian state of Pará would roll out a new system, initially announced in 2023, to ensure the traceability of all cattle across its vast herd. A system to track cattle from birth is a critical reform to ensure cattle are no longer raised on illegally deforested land in Brazil’s Amazon. On December 1, 2025, Para’s animal health control agency proudly said that all cattle moved in the state would need to be traceable starting in January 2026.
But the next day, Pará Governor Helder Barbalho postponed implementation of the program until December 31, 2030. Barbalho complained that international markets had not rewarded Pará for its effort to develop the traceability system. He did not explain, however, how maintaining the current lack of transparency, and undermining years of preparatory work by his own government, would help the state develop sustainable cattle ranching.
Cattle ranching is the main driver of deforestation in Pará and other states in Brazil’s Amazon. In October 2025, Human Rights Watch reported that cattle ranchers had illegally seized land, devastating the livelihoods of lawful residents in the Terra Nossa smallholder settlement and the Cachoeira Seca Indigenous territory—both in Pará—affecting residents’ rights to housing, land, and culture.
Through the analysis of cattle transport permits issued by the Pará government, Human Rights Watch identified five cases in which illegal ranches in Terra Nossa and Cachoeira Seca supplied cattle to ranches outside these protected areas. Those ranches then subsequently sold the cattle to slaughterhouses belonging to the giant JBS firm. The cattle ranches investigated in these territories are illegal under Brazilian federal law.
In November 2024, our researchers met in Belém, Pará’s capital, with the officials responsible for developing the state’s Official Individual Traceability System of Bovines. They described the program as a state government priority and emphasized that the system was designed to strengthen Pará’s competitiveness in export markets such as the European Union and Japan.
But the delay deprives ranchers and slaughterhouses in Pará of a system to monitor their supply chains to ensure that cattle are not raised on farms where there has been illegal deforestation and abuses against Indigenous peoples and other local communities.
Governor Barbalho should reverse his decision. Doing so would protect Pará’s Amazon and the communities who depend on the rainforest for their survival.
