Cattle for sale at Bac Ha market in Vietnam's Lao Cai province, on Nov 15. - COURTESY OF CHRIS TRINH
CHIANG MAI: “Larb Ngua Dip”, a local delicacy composed of raw beef drenched in blood jelly, lime, chilli and fresh herbs, is not for the faint-hearted but considered among its fans in rural southern Laos a fresh and tangy delight. The meal, however, caused 121 locals to develop black skin lesions and vomit uncontrollably in April 2024.
Infected beef used in the dish had caused the outbreak of anthrax, a disease that was largely contained through cattle vaccination in the Mekong region for the past two decades but resurfaced in recent years.
Meanwhile, debilitating livestock illnesses like lumpy skin disease, which before October 2020 was not detected in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, have emerged, threatening more than 1.7 million cattle in the area.
Even more outbreaks could follow as cattle smuggling appears to be expanding in the region. While the practice itself is not new, it has become more lucrative in recent years because of the cross-border barriers erected by regional governments to control the Covid-19 pandemic and protect local livestock from disease.
Most of the cattle is destined for China and Vietnam. China is the world’s second-largest beef consumer by total volume after the United States, with 10.6 million tonnes consumed in 2023. The Vietnamese, while consuming less than 10 per cent of China’s total, ate an estimated 8.5 kg per person in 2022, double that of the Chinese.
Despite rising consumption, Vietnam’s herds only meet less than half the country’s domestic demand, while China’s beef output has stagnated due to urbanisation, forage degradation and higher labour costs.
Cattle smugglers bypass expensive requirements for vaccinations and quarantine, which can take up to 30 days at the Thailand-Myanmar border and up to 82 days at the border of Myanmar or Laos and China.
During this period, traders are required to pay for the cows’ upkeep, which can cost US$2 (S$2.70) to US$3 per day per cow to maintain their weight before they can enter the Chinese markets.
“The strict checklists prevent us from accessing China’s market,” admitted a Laotian cattle farmer who wanted to be known as Chai.
“We can supply cattle only through Chinese middlemen who smuggle the animals across the border.”
Cows and buffaloes are sold at a livestock market in Mangshi City, Yunnan Province, China, on Sept 14. The market is close to Myanmar’s northern border, and is known for selling smuggled cattle from Myanmar. - COURTESY OF GEBU
Over in Myanmar, the region’s biggest cattle supplier, the turmoil caused by the 2021 military coup has forced traders to rely on smuggling networks to secure safe passage for their bovine. The civil war has also whittled resources for animal disease control and vaccination programmes, raising the risk of smuggled cattle spreading diseases to local herds.
The fact that smuggled cows are typically mixed with local herds to mask their origins and spend periods in cattle-fattening hubs also increases this risk.
“We do not ask the origins of the animals here,” said a Chinese cattle trader at Mangshi, a major livestock market in the Chinese province of Yunnan near the Myanmar border. “It’s not necessary to worry about the disease. If the cattle are sick, they will not be able to journey that far.”
The reality is more dangerous.
“Cattle may only show signs of disease during transportation,” said Dr Therdsak Yano, a professor in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Thailand’s Chiang Mai University, who has studied the cross-border movement of cattle in the Mekong region.
“When they are stressed, exhausted and hungry, their immunity drops. Symptoms appear, and they can spread the virus along the way.”
The outbreaks can cause devastating losses to farms and threaten food security. At least 900,000 cattle in the Mekong region were infected during the peak of the first lumpy skin disease outbreak in 2021, according to a report by the World Organisation for Animal Health. Analysis of the virus strains indicated that the outbreak was strongly linked to illegal animal movement.
Unregulated cattle could spread diseases transmissible to humans. Myanmar, for example, has recorded at least 116 cases of brucellosis, a bacterial disease that causes flu-like symptoms.
Veterinarian Le Thi Ha vaccinates cattle for Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) in Tho An, a town on the outskirts of Hanoi, on Nov 3. - COURTESY OF CHRIS TRINH
Cattle smuggling – done via a vast network of farmers, brokers and traders – is facilitated by corrupt border patrol officers and the local authorities.
Traders estimate that thousands of cattle cross the Mekong region’s porous borders each day, but only a small fraction is detected because local enforcement capabilities are limited. Thailand, for example, seized 1,182 cattle in 23 incidents between 2022 and the first half of 2024.
On the Myanmar side of the Myanmar-Chinese border, it involves brokers who send videos of live cattle to Chinese merchants using the messaging application WeChat, and then arranging for a logistics company to walk the cattle across the rugged border terrain for two days.
The ongoing civil war in Myanmar has made moving cattle riskier and more expensive, as both the military and the ethnic armed groups it is battling collect “taxes” or “gate fees” at checkpoints to guarantee the safe delivery of the animals to the border.
A broker from Myanmar’s Magway region, a major cattle production hub, explained in anonymity that he had to pay at least three different armed groups to get cattle to the Chinese or Thai border. He pays up to US$1,400 at each checkpoint to move a batch of between 100 and 150 cows.
Despite these bribes and additional fees, the returns on cattle smuggling can be significant.
Chiang Mai University economist Manoj Potapohn said brokers and other players in the smuggling chain get about half of the price of cattle sold at China’s border – which can go for about US$1,100 per head.
Smuggling across the 2,416-km Thai-Myanmar border mostly happens at night through natural passageways and areas without border patrols. The hot spots are provinces such as Tak, Mae Hong Son, Kanchanaburi, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Chumphon and Ranong.
According to three traders, speaking on condition of anonymity, between 10 and 20 cattle are smuggled each night during the dry season at just one location in Tak province. To minimise losses in the event of a seizure, traders move cattle in small groups, making it easier to transport the animals on small trucks.
When the cattle arrive in Thailand, they are mixed with local herds in a process known as “cow laundering”.
Brokers present the cattle to local livestock officers, claiming they are legitimate but that they had failed to register them on time. If no suspicious signs are detected, the officers will register the cattle and issue certification.
Once legally certified, the cattle are vaccinated and receive permission for transport. After being moved to non-border provinces, they can be given ear tags issued by the Livestock Department and can then be moved anywhere.
“It’s easy to identify smuggled cattle from Myanmar. They are smaller and thinner than locally raised cattle and are sold at much lower prices,” said Srinuan Sunthorn, a Thai cattle farmer from Chiang Mai’s Chai Prakan district.
Over in Vietnam, smugglers pay residents of border villages to act as legal owners of cows originating from Laos, and bribe village heads and local officials for the required documentation. The cattle are then sent to black markets where they are sold for domestic consumption, or continue the arduous journey across the China border.
The latter group is loaded onto small trucks. At Tra Linh market along the China border, also known as one of the final rest stops, the cattle go through another selection. Fit cows are smuggled across the Chinese-Vietnamese border, while weaker ones are again sold domestically.
The entire journey – in which the cattle live in trucks and walk long distances – can take as little as three to four days.
“Once the foreign cattle are unloaded, many traders immediately herd our local cattle in. The movement of cattle from one region to another has led to the spread of diseases,” said Phung The Hai, a director of the National Livestock Breeding Centre.
Conscious of these loopholes, the regional authorities are working to stave off the next big outbreak of disease.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2022 launched a US$$270 million project to improve livestock value chains in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar – the region’s three weakest countries in transboundary animal disease control – to help smallholder farmers improve livestock health.
This will lead to disease control zones being set up in certain provinces, spanning a 100-km radius each, with the first cattle breeding centre set up in Cambodia and Laos and the first veterinary vaccines centre in Cambodia.
The project continues until 2031 and the ADB could expand efforts if it proves successful, said Srinivasan Ancha, its principal climate change specialist.
Some countries, he said, adopt a “defensive attitude” when an outbreak occurs.
“This hesitation is also present within government setups, as officials may be reluctant to acknowledge outbreaks due to trade concerns,” he said.
The ADB’s project exists alongside ground-up efforts like a mobile application launched in Chiang Mai in 2014 to help community members report unusual disease events in their areas. Called the Participatory One Health Digital Disease Detection (PODD) app, it was created by network of veterinarians, scientists, public health officers, livestock officers, farmers and local communities.
Tested and developed in collaboration with 400 local administrative organisations and 19,000 farmers, it has so far successfully detected and contained foot-and-mouth disease before it could spread on five occasions – preventing an estimated loss of 5 million baht (S$195,000).
The usage of the app has expanded to five provinces in Laos – Khammuan, Savannakhet, Champasak, Bolikhamsai, and Vientiane – with the developers planning to extend it to Cambodia and Myanmar when the political situation in the latter is more stable.
“Countries can no longer trade by focusing on selling cattle at the lowest prices. If we want to be the kitchen of the world, we need to emphasise food safety practices, including hygiene and disease-free products,” said Manoj from Chiang Mai University. - The Straits Times/ANN
*** Additional reporting by Konlaphat Siri, Aung Myo Htut and Lam Nguyen
This collaborative report involving six media outlets in Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam is supported by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.
