The Irish are not too popular in Brazil since the IFA forced a partial ban on beef exports to the EU, writes Seán Mac Connell.
MID-APRIL:Following a discussion with my boss we decide I should accept an invitation from the Brazilian beef barons to visit their country. We agree that it's akin to trying to cover the Iraqi war from inside a US military base but it would help expand our understanding of the Brazilian beef industry.
FRIDAY, MAY 2:Arrive in São Paulo, the third-largest city in the world. On the seventh floor balcony of my hotel, an aircraft passes so close over my head that I can almost feel the heat of the engines. We eat at the Churrascaria Barbacoa restaurant where the manager gives me special attention because I am Irish, standing over me to point out the quality of each cut being served.
SATURDAY:Taken to Congonhas airport, which is literally in the middle of the city, surrounded by tower blocks. We are flying in a twin-engined propeller 12-seater. We take off, dodge the tower-blocks and try to land in two cloud-covered airports before eventually touching down 150 miles from our original target. Eventually reach a ranch near Uberaba by taxi. Here are assembled the elite of the Brazilian beef industry, the former and current ministers for agriculture, senators, businessmen and a man looking strangely like Michael O'Leary who is introduced as the "future president of Brazil".
Every time "The Irishman" is introduced, the group receives a lecture on how misunderstood the farming system in Brazil is in the EU. There is an accusation that "sanitary protectionism" is being used against them and how unfair the IFA action was.
Then, national pride emerges. Brazil, we are told, does not need the EU market to survive, exporting as it does to 180 different countries and building up new markets in Indonesia and China, not to mention the 35kg per head consumed by 180 million Brazilians from the national herd of 200 million cattle.
SUNDAY:Wall-to-wall beef day with a visit to the Exposebu show where the finest Brazilian breeding cattle are on display. Scientists tell us how the white-skinned cattle from Asia have been adapted to meet Brazilian conditions. We are briefed on how the cattle are identified and tagged and meet a man who paid $1 million (€647,000) for a half share in a bull. We visit our first farm, which is surrounded by 300 kilometres of electric fence and are shown how the bulls bred there are reared, one animal to each hectare, two cowboys to handle 1,000 animals. That night we find there are three channels on the television devoted solely to cattle sales.
MONDAY:We have nicknamed the pilot of our aircraft "Cloudy" as he seems to fly until he finds clouds and then he lands in them. Cloudy flies over what our hosts call the "biggest farm in the world".
The young Dutchman, Filip Traen, who shows us around the Independencia meat plant at Nova Andradina, had worked on a dairy farm in Tipperary as a student. He is well clued in on the problems created by the Irish and invites me to step down into the holding pens with the wild white cattle, which, he assures me, would mean instant death but would greatly enhance Brazilian/EU relations. The plant kills and processes 1,200 animals a day, a massive operation. Workers are paid $450 (€291) a month but none of us have ever seen people working so hard. The plant is spotlessly clean and the animals all seem to be tagged.
TUESDAY:Visit a farm which contains a major Natural Heritage site at Recanto Ecologico Rio De Prata, near Jardim, 270km from Campo Grande in Mato Grosso do Sul after a visit to a limestone cave first seen by white men only 40 years ago. The vampire bats living there, the guide tells us, will not harm humans, only Irishmen.
WEDNESDAY:Fly down close to the Bolivian border to San Francisco farm in the Pantanal region. This is a huge working farm, as big as Co Laois, running cattle, growing rice and hosting tourists. Here are 315 species of birds and jaguar which kill an average of 0.5 per cent of the cattle herd annually. On a boat trip we catch piranha, ride horses through the Savannah, and see a jaguar and its cub from a truck using a searchlight. My bedroom is called the jaguar room and I am beginning to understand the Brazilian sense of humour.
THURSDAY:Before flying back to Sao Paulo with Cloudy, a journey similar to Dublin/Nice, we visit a commercial crocodile farm and eat one of the inmates on the Bodoquena Farm, all before 11am. We arrive in Sao Paulo in time for our buttock-numbing journey home.