Under Jair Bolsonaro, Meat Is Becoming an Unaffordable Luxury Item for Most Brazilians
Brazil is the world’s biggest beef exporter, yet over half its population says it can no longer afford red meat. President Jair Bolsonaro is denying the problem exists, even as his own policies deepen most Brazilians’ cost of living crisis.
Due to rising prices, 55 percent of Brazilians have reportedly stopped buying red meat. (Getty Images)
Brazil is headed toward presidential elections this October — and for the Workers’ Party (PT) leading the challenge to far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, food prices are at the top of the agenda. In recent weeks, social media has been awash with videos of PT supporters taking their protests into supermarkets, putting stickers next to food items to show how much cheaper they used to be under left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula.
Alongside these protests, in June, members of the Homeless Workers’ Movement protested in the food courts of luxury shopping centers in Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo. During this action, protesters held flags emblazoned with the word “Fome” (Hunger) and carried small pieces of bone, in memory of recent widely reported images of people looking for scraps of meat discarded from butcher shops.
These actions were inspired by a recent shocking report published by the Brazilian Research Network on Food Sovereignty and Security (PENNSAN). It highlighted the grim reality that 125.2 million Brazilians, or 58.7 percent of the population, currently live in some form of food insecurity. The strength of this report has been felt across the country’s media landscape, as many newspaper headlines bore the figure 33.1 million — the number of people in Brazil who go hungry on a daily basis.
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