Originally published on Mekong Eye

Screeching noises broke the calm of a chilly morning at the open livestock market in Mangshi, a town in China’s southern Yunnan province near the Myanmar border. Trucks had arrived, filled with cattle and buffaloes.

The animals were taken off the vehicles and led to an open, dusty ground. More than 100 head of live cattle were there, awaiting inspection by eager buyers.

These animals would soon be taken to other local markets for resale, to cattle fattening farms or sent to slaughterhouses to meet the growing demand for meat from Chinese consumers.

For decades, traders at the Myanmar-China border have seized the opportunity created by the gap between cattle supply and demand. 

Adi is one of those. He visits a hotel lobby once a week to use the internet in Myitkyina, the capital city of Myanmar’s northernmost Kachin state.

Since the civil war approached the city’s outskirts in September, his home internet had been cut off for several months. Hotels were one of the few places that still provided internet access. 

He sends videos of live cattle to Chinese merchants on the other side of the border via China’s most popular messaging app, WeChat. 

After the buyers have inspected the age and health of the animals through the videos, if they decide to buy them, they transfer a deposit to Adi. The remaining payment is made during the handover.

Adi then immediately contacts a logistics company that smuggles live cattle into China, taking advantage of the rugged border terrain.

Walking the cattle across the border for two days is part of the plan, as well as bribing border officials and armed forces to secure safe passage.

Due to the intensifying fighting between Myanmar’s military and ethnic armed groups, Adi has lost his home and farmland and now lives in an internally displaced persons camp.

Acting as a broker in the cattle smuggling trade is his only means of earning a livelihood. Many villagers there opt for the same path for survival. 

This lucrative business capitalizes on Myanmar’s large cattle supply and low domestic consumption, influenced by religious practices that encourage abstaining from beef. 

According to the country’s National Livestock Baseline Survey 2018, approximately 9.6 million cattle are raised by 2.2 million farmers.

The central dry zone, covering the Mandalay, Sagaing and Magway regions, holds more than half of the national cattle population and has been the major cattle production hub.

A study published by the Torino World Affairs Institute estimated that in 2017, about 4,000 cattle were smuggled across the Myanmar-China border daily, with only 1,000 entering legally. 

Other research in 2018 conducted by scholars at the University of Queensland, pointed out that about 150,000 Myanmar cattle indirectly enter China through Thailand, Laos and Viet Nam annually. 

To curb smuggling and transboundary animal diseases, bilateral trade negotiations between Myanmar and China have been taking place since 2017, leading to the signing of a protocol on cattle quarantine and disease control in January 2020. 

The plan was put on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to 1,012 days of border closures and left more than 15,000 live cattle stranded at the border. 

China also built a 500-kilometer barbed wire fence along the border to prevent the spread of coronavirus from Myanmar, simultaneously blocking the smuggling of migrants related to cyber scam rings. 

This measure had serious implications for the cattle trade, which now faces increased restrictions. Although the border eventually reopened in January 2023, the trade was then damaged by the war after the military coup two years earlier.

Heavy fighting broke out after the Three Brotherhood Alliance – a coalition of ethnic armed groups including the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and the Arakan Army – launched Operation 1027 on October 27 last year to seize control of the area from the military along northern Myanmar’s border with China.

Clashes also erupted along the main cattle transportation route to Muse – Myanmar’s export point to China’s Ruili town in Yunnan province. Some trucks were attacked and cattle in transit were reportedly killed. 

Transportation now takes longer due to logistical disruptions, while inflation has driven up logistical costs.

Despite the conflict making the cattle trade a riskier business, it has also helped sustain smuggling, as both the military and ethnic armed groups benefit by collecting bribes – or what they call “taxes” or “gate fees” – from traders to guarantee the safe delivery of their animals to the border.

But unlike an official tax system, the profits from these fees are usually unrecorded. It is unclear where the money goes, though it is believed it goes to partially fund the ongoing civil war and other illicit activities.

One broker from the Magway region, one of the major cattle production hubs, explained in anonymity that he typically pays about 3 million kyats (US$1,400) per military checkpoint to move between 100 and 150 heads of cattle from inland Myanmar to the border – an amount that maximizes profits by reducing the number of trips. 

Some military checkpoints request fees amounting to about 10% of the total value of the cattle, although sometimes they demand more. 

He also has to pay ethnic armed groups – at least three different groups on each route, whether to the China or the Thai border. Thailand is a hub for cattle fattening that helps increase the value of them, and also a market for low-weight cheap cows coming from Myanmar.  

Near the Thai border, armed groups request fees in Thai baht, with payments made in lump sums for each trip, ranging from between 10,000 and 20,000 baht ($300 and $600). Close to China, armed groups require fees of about $5 per head of cattle.

Despite the transportation and payment at various gates, Manoj Potapohn, an economist from Chiang Mai University who co-studied the cattle trade in Myanmar, said the nature of the cattle trade was volatile with high risks and high returns.

Even with the transportation costs and gate fees, brokers gain nearly half of the price sold at China’s border – the equivalent of more than a $400 gain per head of cattle. Farmers gain $400 per head from selling to brokers, while the selling price at the border is between $1,100 and $1,400.

Although Myanmar’s cattle disease reports have not been available since the military coup, data from the World Organisation for Animal Health shows that between 2016 and 2020, the country previously reported zoonotic diseases in cattle.

These include nearly 30 cases of deadly anthrax and 116 cases of brucellosis, a bacterial disease caused by Brucella abortus. The bacteria can be transmitted to humans via direct contact or consumption of infected animals and their milk, causing flu-like symptoms

These numbers likely represent only a fraction of cases, as Myanmar’s reporting system was not well developed. 

Foot-and-mouth disease is also a major concern, with more than 13,400 cases reported in the same period. Although it rarely affects humans, it has severe economic impacts due to its high contagiousness among livestock.

Supported by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network, this collaborative report brings together seven journalists and photojournalists from six media outlets in Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, and Viet Nam to investigate the health and economic impacts of illegal cattle trade in the Mekong region.

Journalists: Kannikar Petchkaew, Gebu, Konlaphat Siri, Aung Myo Htut and Vu Thanh

Photojournalists: Nattakit Meesakul and Chris Trinh

Editors and contributors: Paritta Wangkiat, Trang Bui, Alan Parkhouse, Tan Hui Yee and Jayalakshmi Shreedhar

Data visualization: Michael Salzwedel

Web development: Rosmy Sophia