Leather

Cattle Purchase

During the last decade, the tanning sector has remunerated the Brazilian raw leather for half of the value received by the American product. This happened because only 5% of American hides presented the defects described below, which are found in 93% of Brazilian hides:

Problems

TICKS, ROUNDWORMS, SCABIES SCARS, ETC.

FIRE MARK.

WIRE SCRATCHES, BRANCHES OR SCREWS, CORRAL SCARS, BODYWORK AND STING HOLES.

Consequences

DIRTIER HIDE AND LESS CONVERSION OF THE CATTLE'S FEED INTO MEAT.

IS AN AGGRESSION TO THE ANIMAL AND THE HIDE, RESULTING IN STRESS, LEADING TO LOSS OF WEIGHT AND LOSS OF HIDE VALUE.

WOUNDS HAVE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES FOR FEED CONVERSION AND CAUSE LOSS OF AREA AND HIDE VALUE.

The market remunerated the sub-quality offered by underpricing it.

The loser is the producer.

Although most people don't think so, the producer actually receives for the hide of his cattle. In reality, slaughterhouses use, to define the final price to be paid to the cattle breeder for the ox arroba, a sum of each item that composes the bovine utilization - and among these items, one is the hide (see table 1).

Table 1: Representativity of each item in the final value of the arroba.

16-carrion steer

HINDQUARTER - REPRESENTS A VALUE OF 57% OF THE CATTLE'S ARROBAS.

FRONT CUT - REPRESENTS A VALUE OF 22% OF THE STEERS' ARROBAS.

NEEDLEPOINT - REPRESENTS A VALUE OF 9% OF THE CATTLE'S ARROBAS.

BY - PRODUCTS - REPRESENTS A VALUE OF 5% OF THE CATTLE ARROBAS.

In the USA, the leather is paid to the producer as in Brazil, i.e., the value of the leather is implicit in the total price paid for the arroba of the cattle.

In the last 10 years, the American frigorific received, on average, US$48.10/leather while the Brazilian received only US$27.01/leather.

The differential for loss of quality, only in leather, in relation to the American, was US$ 21.09.

The improvement of the leather tends to benefit not only the tannery companies, but the entire production chain, since the leather has direct influence on the price of the arroba, i.e., improving the quality of the leather would increase the final price of the arroba, increasing the revenue of the producer, processing industry and tanneries.

The 10 Commandments of leather quality improvement

I – Never use barbed wire;

II – Do not use sharp stings or dogs for cattle handling;

III – Periodic combat of ectoparasites (ticks, hornworms, horn flies, etc);
IV – Keep the pastures clean;
V – Always look at the pens, looking for spikes that might puncture the cattle;
VI – Mark in the correct places (face, neck and shins) with a maximum diameter of 11 cm;
VII – Dehorning cattle;
VIII – Offer mineral supplements;
IX – Choose appropriate vehicles to transport the animals, avoiding nails and wooden spikes;
X – Well treated cattle are cattle with better results.