Mekong Eye (mekongeye.com) là trang web và mạng lưới báo chí chuyên cung cấp thông tin về môi trường, khí hậu và các vấn đề phát triển tại khu vực sông Mê Kông.
Đây là một dự án truyền thông phi lợi nhuận của Mạng lưới Báo chí Trái đất (Earth Journalism Network – EJN) thuộc tổ chức quốc tế Internews. Dự án này cũng nhận được sự tài trợ từ Cơ quan Hợp tác Phát triển Quốc tế Thụy Điển (Sida).
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Viet Nam’s love for tender beef comes with hidden costs
1 June 2026 at 21:42 (Updated on 3 June 2026 at 17:59)
Beef lovers grapple with food fraud and environmental impacts as climate change intensifies and traceability gaps persist
Vietnamese are increasingly in favor of the tender beef from foreign cattle. PHOTO: Trang Bùi
In October 2025, the CEO of Hidasan, a three-year-old Vietnamese food processing company, was arrested for falsely advertising buffalo meat as beef. Together with another company, SK Foods, Hidasan had imported cheap Indian buffalo meat, injected it with additives in powder form, and sold it as Australian and Japanese wagyu at about four times the original price.
Hidasan was recognized as a nationally prestigious brand only two months before the arrest. Within 2024 and 2025, it produced at least 14 tons of disguised buffalo meat, which were sold to popular restaurant chains and supermarkets in Hà Nội, HCMC, Đà Nẵng and Nha Trang.
It was one of the major seizures of blatant food counterfeits made by authorities in the past decade. Yet beyond such illegal activities, the imported beef market is rife with ‘lighter’ food frauds that are often overlooked — Kobe beef that is not from Kobe, Japanese wagyu that is not Japanese, artificially marbled beef with questionable origin, and so on.
For beef eaters in Viet Nam, making sense of what animal has been slaughtered, where it came from and what has happened to the meat by the time it reaches the dining table is a headache. In most cases, they would only find out right before, if not during the meal.
Pigs disguised as cows lose their pink hue quickly after boiling. Artificial fat injected into buffalo meat and lean beef cuts melts when left at room temperature. These processes makes steaks that taste like something else.
With multiple gaps in supply chain traceability, scanning a barcode or QR code, checking label information or asking restaurateurs and online sellers usually does not get consumers very far. To be confident that the meat comes from the correct animal, region or country, a beef eater almost has to become an inspector: testing the meat, identifying the importer, pressuring them for box information and understanding the industry freight lingo.
Four decades ago, beef was in extremely short supply. Today, Viet Nam is among Asia’s biggest beef consumers, the majority of whose supply comes from cattle raised outside the country.
With large traceability gaps along the supply chain, Vietnamese beef aficionados face their challenges at home: racking up hospital bills while consuming a costly protein that oftentimes, is not only protein.
On the other side of the world, ranchers are bearing the brunt of climate change while feeders are fattening up the animals to satisfy global demand.
Read the series below:
Part 1
Hotpots, barbecues and alcohol: A diet gone red
Vietnamese consumers, particularly men, are eating more imported beef while grappling with high rates of gout
Part 2
How brands create an illusion of traceability
Vietnamese buyers ask for tender and beautifully marbled beef. Companies are responding with fat injections and vague origins
Part 3
What’s in a cut: the grass not so green on the other side
As climate impacts intensify, tender beef lovers in Viet Nam ultimately face ethical questions beyond food fraud
This story was produced with support from the Media Fellowship program of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.
About the writer
Trang Bùi
Trang Bùi is an environmental journalist based in Ha Noi, Viet Nam.
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Hotpots, barbecues and alcohol: A diet gone red
1 June 2026 at 21:24 (Updated on 2 June 2026 at 6:53)
Vietnamese consumers, particularly men, are eating more imported beef while grappling with high rates of gout
The growing popularity of Korean barbecue in Viet Nam has helped drive demand for tender imported beef. PHOTO: nicehee0610 via Pixabay under Creative Common license
HA NOI, VIET NAM – A classic Vietnamese home-cooked meal consists of rice, one vegetable dish, one soup, and one protein source — often pork, chicken or fish. For decades, beef was a luxury, chopped up and sprinkled lightly on phở.
These days, a weekend hangout with friends means large steaks sliced into thumb-sized bites sizzling on the grill, or trays of frozen briskets dipped in a hotpot. The muscular cuts of Vietnamese Yellow and Laisind cows would be too tough to cook this way, nor are there enough of them. Fatty ones such as those of the Angus breed from the other side of the world are more sought after.
Over the past decade, free trade agreements, East Asian influence and concerns for domestic food safety have opened doors for more foreign-born cattle to enter Viet Nam. From a self-sufficient country, Viet Nam is now a major beef importer in Asia.
At the beginning of the millenium, the average Vietnamese ate about 2.4kg of beef a year. Two decades later, consumption has reached nearly 6kg, much higher than most Southeast Asian peers.
Males, the frequenters of beer gardens, hotpots and BBQ eateries, embrace this diet change the most, and it shows on hospital records.
Masculine feasts
Beef does not appear on dining tables by accident, nor simply because Vietnamese are getting richer, sustainability researcher Arve Hansen at the University of Oslo argues.
In his research, Hansen detailed a process he called “meatification”, in which higher demand for the slaughter of faraway animals in Viet Nam requires several factors. One of them is social acceptance.
Various research, including Hansen’s, have pointed to the influence of East Asian culture in Viet Nam’s dietary shifts. Korean dramas featuring cozy barbecue eateries and Chinese cinematic montages of hotpots are embedded in the memory of many Vietnamese millennials, while Japanese cuisine has permeated the society through comics, films and music.
Though not yet a daily staple, beef being centered at celebrations and special feasts is enough to drive up demand, Hansen says. According to researchers at Viet Nam National University of Agriculture (NUA), Ha Noi residents buy imported beef mainly because they want to cook hotpots, barbecues and steaks.
“If you look at the cuts that we export to Viet Nam, a lot of it is brisket, oyster blade, chuck. A lot of these are all used for thin slicing, which you use either at BBQ or hot pot restaurants,” said Spencer Whitaker, trade manager at Meat and Livestock Australia.
Throughout the 2010s, Korean and Japanese grill and hotpot restaurants mushroomed across major cities of Viet Nam. These chains struggled during Covid and in the past few years, have slightly downsized, according to market research firm Q&Me. Taking their place in 2025 and 2026 are Vietnamese-styled beer, grill and hotpot gardens, where beef is still the center of the meal, research firm IPOS reports.
Researchers also found that eating beef makes a population of Vietnamese feel affluent and socially elevated. One respondent in Hansen’s paper gladly stated that “she was no longer forced to eat rice, and that her favorite dish was beef.”
For many men, eating beef and sometimes wild meats are libido-enhancing and a symbol of masculinity. Paired with another masculine signifier, alcohol, a beef feast is the ultimate show of power and male camaraderie.
Beef and alcohol are so intertwined that according to the Asia Beef Network, slaughterhouses and dealers claimed that demand dropped significantly after the country applied much stricter fines on drunk driving in 2024.
When these feasts are prepared at home, women are the ones shopping for the foreign meat, the NUA 2022 research revealed. When asked why they prefer imported beef, nearly half said they bought it for their loved ones – husbands, children and fathers.
The arrival of industrial beef
Social trends, however, are only a contributing factor, Hansen cautions. Customers have the freedom to choose, but only among what’s available on the shelves.
Before the ‘80s, beef was barely on the shelves. The government’s active support for the domestic cattle industry in the ‘90s put red meat back in wet market stalls, and since the 2010s, with the facilitation of free trade agreements (FTAs) and efforts to “supermarketize” the country, Hansen argued, foreign industrial beef was on the menu.
In the past 15 years, Viet Nam has signed several FTAs that granted beef from Australia, New Zealand, India and Canada zero import tariffs. At the same time, the government has consistently cracked down on wet markets, citing public hygiene and food safety concerns.
According to research firm Q&Me, supermarket chains have consistently expanded since 2019, while the number of minimarts have increased three-fold. The majority of these stores belong to Vietnamese corporations.
As the retail landscape shifted, so did Vietnamese buyers’ behaviors. Accepting foreign beef also means warming to frozen and chilled meat — a new habit for the Vietnamese. From waking up early to catch the freshest cut at wet markets, Vietnamese now prefer buying icy chunks from a supermarket, or ordering a steak coming out of the refrigerator.
Covid, according to the agriculture research center AgroInfo, has also turned the Vietnamese much more tolerant to frozen beef.
“It takes some time, but it seems industrial meat has managed to become more embedded in Vietnamese food practices,” Hansen told Mekong Eye.
After 15 years in the country, the demand for foreign cattle has become so high that large local firms have started importing foreign breeds. In 2022, crossbred cattle made up about 67% of the total cattle population, according to a meeting document published by the Asia Beef Network.
Increasing health burdens
The domination of large chain supermarkets, however, comes with its own public health challenges.
A 2025 study that looked at retail trends from 2009 to 2023 across 97 countries revealed that across the globe, large chain supermarkets have increasingly taken over food retail, and were linked to higher rise in obesity.
Meanwhile, the effects of drinking and eating beef, particularly among males, have shown up in their kidney, liver and joint health.
A study on 235 adults conducted by the Ho Chi Minh City University of Medicine and Pharmacy found that almost 1 in every 2 males has high acid uric levels, and nearly 1 in 10 has gout. This number is 1 in 4 and 1 in 100 in females, respectively.
Gout rates have jumped 7 times between 2003 and 2014, with 96% of patients being male, according to a national survey in 2019.
Overall, Vietnamese consume a level of protein as high as North Americans and Europeans, and much higher than WHO recommendations. An average Vietnamese eats a total of 102 grams of protein per day, while one with a healthy body weight burning about 2000 calories per day only needs between 50 and 75 grams.
Health burdens do not stop at gout and obesity. Vietnamese beef aficionados in search of tender, marbled steaks also have to navigate a market full of counterfeits and mislabeled products. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-protein-supply?tab=map
Part 2. How brands create an illusion of traceability
Part 3. What’s in a cut: the grass not so green on the other side
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How brands create an illusion of traceability
1 June 2026 at 21:27 (Updated on 1 June 2026 at 22:37)
Vietnamese buyers ask for tender and beautifully marbled beef. Companies are responding with fat injections and vague origins
Two cuts of frozen artificially marbled beef bought at a Ha Noi supermarket. The brands do not specify where their meat comes from. PHOTO: Trang Bùi
Part 1. Hotpots, barbecues and alcohol: A diet gone red
HA NOI, VIET NAM – Bottega Zelachi Ranch is not a farm in the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. However, it allegedly sells beef imported from all of them, nevertheless.
It also sells cheese, meat, seafood and other groceries and is a brand owned by a Vietnamese distributor.
Their frozen Australian oyster blade beef sold at a major chain supermarket in Hà Nội comes with a QR code that does not scan, and a barcode that shows no result when run through Viet Nam’s national traceability portal.
Brand owner Đại Tân Việt Jsc. did not reply to Mekong Eye’s questions about the inactive codes, or the confusion the ranch stamp may cause for buyers.
As Vietnamese increasingly seek tender, beautifully marbled foreign beef cuts, companies in Viet Nam have tried to tie their brands to well-known geographical indications to create an illusion of traceability.
Hidasan, the company whose CEO was arrested last year for selling starchy buffalo meat as wagyu, cashed in on Hida, the name of Japan’s famous black haired cattle who are raised only in Gifu prefecture – despite their products having no connection to that region.
With traceability gaps throughout the supply chain, it is an arduous task for Vietnamese shoppers to make sure they are buying the right nutrients, even the right animal, from the right country and the right region.
Faking a connection with the land
Certain soil, rainfall, temperature, breed genetics and local traditions make a certain quality of agricultural product.
Kobe beef, Parmegiano-Reggiano cheese and Columbia coffee are examples of food whose name is tied to a specific land and its local traditions. Their legacy is protected using geographical indications (GIs), registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
In a world hungry for rare foods, fighting their imitations is an uphill battle.
According to journalist Larry Olmsted, the author of Real Food, Fake Food, the “bait and switch” tactic plagued most countries in the world. For years, the USDA banned all Japanese beef imports, yet fake Kobe beef was still sold in every affordable to high-end restaurant.
Late chef Anthony Bourdain told MIC magazine in 2017 that customers should be suspicious of high-end foods such as Kobe beef, wagyu or truffle fries, especially when they are advertised as affordable – if they don’t want to participate in the specialty foods ‘scam economy’.
Wagyu, for example, contrary to common belief, does not automatically mean the Japanese black cattle. In a lot of cases, it is a hybrid called wangus, as Bon Appetit reports, between Japanese wagyu and the common Angus.
In Viet Nam, Japanese wagyu and especially Kobe beef have earned superstar status, fetching up to 15 million VND (US$570) per kilogram.
Frauds, as usual, come with a reputation. Mekong Eye found at least six companies and restaurants which claimed to sell Kobe beef, but do not belong to the Kobe Beef Association’s official list of distributors. Some of them sell the meat at half the market price, about 5-6 million VND ($190-265) a kilogram – still a month’s salary for many Vietnamese workers.
The companies did not respond to Mekong Eye’s questions about their beef’s origin.
In the middle price tier, the scale of mislabeling is much higher.
After Covid, widespread drought and increased consolidation of the cattle industry have led many ranchers in the U.S. to close up shop. US beef prices rose to historic highs, and customers across Asia could not buy any due to short supplies, said Phạm Như, marketing manager of Canada Beef Association in Viet Nam.
Yet Như recalled seeing beef labeled as from the U.S. all over store shelves, butcher counters, restaurants, and supermarkets in Viet Nam, speaking from a personal capacity.
She admitted the association struggled to distinguish between genuine distributors and restaurant owners, and those who are willing to obscure their meat’s origin.
“That is a persistent problem of a low-cost consumer market. When restaurant owners and distributors see they can use existing well-known brands, they will do it to make money,” said Như.
As low-cost barbecues and hotpots became the latest trend that overtook Korean and Japanese chains, many have seen the opportunity to cash in. In October 2023, a TikTok account called Tuấn Bò Kobe with more than 60,000 followers eagerly told traders to swap fresh beef shanks for frozen Indian buffalo cuts – which are three times cheaper than the common beef price.
He guaranteed an increase of 50% profit, and in another video, claimed that about 80-90% of affordable barbecue and hotpot buffet eateries were using Indian buffalo meat.
There is now no accurate estimate of such mislabeling frauds in Viet Nam. According to UN Comtrade data, however, 73% of frozen beef imported to Viet Nam is from India. Japanese beef makes up less than 1%, and US only 5%.
Not just protein
Injecting beef with fats and oils, unlike disguising buffalo meat as beef, is not illegal. One Japanese company, Hokubee Co, popularized the practice in the ‘70s, turning lean Hokkaido cows often bred for dairy into what they called “economical wagyu”.
Hokubee beef is distributed via its Australian subsidiary to three Vietnamese partners. Copycats, often marketed as ‘technology beef’ or ‘beef injected with milk or mushroom extract’, however, can be found across e-commerce platforms, social media and supermarket shelves.
One such copycat is Hidasan. Before its operation was halted by Ha Noi police, the company sold both buffalo meat and beef injected with 30% of total weight made up of powdery food additives. These substances are legal in many parts of the world including Viet Nam, and increasing scientific evidence has shown that some of them can be harmful.
Maltodextrin, for example, a thickener with no nutritional value also used as an insecticide substance, has been reported in separate studies that it altered neural activities in rats, thinning the mucus layer of their intestines and weakening their metabolism. Today it is used in many processed foods, from snacks and energy drinks to baked goods.
The starchy substance also has a glycemic index of 95, higher than condensed milk, brown sugar or syrups – which means it accelerates blood sugar much faster than any of these foods. If consumed in a large amount, it can become a health risk for diabetic patients. For people on a keto diet, the product is not the pure protein they are looking for.
A group of modified starch, such as INS 1450 and INS 1414, used as a stabilizer in the injected beef, also has a similar glycemic index.
SHMP, also known as INS452(i) or sodium hexametaphosphate, has been found to cause pale and swollen kidneys in rats in 10% concentration.
Xanthan gum, or INS 415, a fermented starch also used in herbicides, paints and wallpaper glue, is highly laxative and can upset the stomach. Infants have developed severe intestinal diseases consuming this food additive.
Artificially marbled beef similar to Hidasan’s is still sold across supermarkets and online stores in Viet Nam. Mekong Eye found many of them with confusing origins.
Fuji, a product of Fujifoods, only writes ‘beef’ on its label, without specifying where the meat is from. Aukobe says its beef is imported, but does not indicate where. Okini claims on its website that its product is from Viet Nam, but writes ‘imported beef’ on its labels.
Mekong Eye asked the three companies to clarify their product origins and address health concerns, but did not receive a response.
Traceability gaps
More than two-thirds of respondents in the NUA 2022 study said they buy imported beef because they trust its origin and label information. Food safety concerns were also behind the switch from wet markets to supermarkets.
Yet plastic packaging, a fancy logo or a few words claiming foreign origin no longer guarantees authenticity.
In Viet Nam, imported beef products do not undergo mandatory government inspection. Anyone having completed the self-declaration process can start selling their meat.
As soon as frozen beef arrives in carton boxes, it is chopped up, repackaged and relabeled with the distributor’s information. This means the majority of traceability data, no matter how comprehensive on the US, Canada, Australia and Japan side, stays with the distributors and rarely reaches retail customers.
MLA representative Whitaker told Mekong Eye there is now little incentive to patch these gaps and implement a bilateral tracing system from farm to fork.
“From a consumer perspective, if they wanted that information, we could potentially do it. But most consumers aren’t willing to pay more money for that ability,” he explained.
“Customers really just want to know that they’re buying it from a reputable seller in our experience,” Whitaker explained.
Research conducted by Whitaker’s team showed that Vietnamese consumers prefer products with QR codes, though they don’t necessarily scan them.
“If they have a QR code, it looks more trustworthy and like a product that has more assurance behind it,” he said.
In China, PwC estimated in 2019 that one in every two kilograms of Australian beef sold isn’t authentic. The country has been piloting blockchains to track the meat all the way to the origin.
In the meantime, beef consumers in Viet Nam who care enough about the source of their meat, will have to ask their sellers and trust their answers.
One online distributor who sells marinated beef sets for barbecue parties, Thịt Nướng Ở Đây, told Mekong Eye they would hesitate to disclose box details unless with wholesale buyers. They did not want their business secrets leaked to their competitors.
Part 3. What’s in a cut: the grass not so green on the other side
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What’s in a cut: the grass not so green on the other side
1 June 2026 at 21:34 (Updated on 2 June 2026 at 7:03)
As climate impacts intensify, tender beef lovers in Viet Nam ultimately face ethical questions beyond food fraud
Cattle grazing at Travis Eklund’s Wineglass Ranch in southern Alberta, Canada. PHOTO: Trang Bùi
Part 1. Hotpots, barbecues and alcohol: A diet gone red
Part 2. How brands create an illusion of traceability
CALGARY & SASKATOON, CANADA – Ranchers Laura and John Laing in southern Alberta have been battling severe drought for the past two years. In 2024, creeks dried up for the first time in generations. Last year, the snowpack was so thin there was barely any spring runoff.
Grass has failed to regrow, while heat and smoke from northwestern wildfires were persistent. Disturbed, some of their cows have refused to breed.
“I think it hit our bottom line. For the first time, we had to buy feed from the US,” Laura Laing told Mekong Eye.
Losing pastures and water sources, the Laings had to part ways with 150 of their cows, reducing the herd to 450. It was a difficult decision, they said.
Many ranchers are getting out, Laura Laing said. A series of droughts since 2020 has driven cattle inventories in Canada to a historic low, pushing up beef prices.
As the industry fattens the cattle more to keep beef on international markets, consumers may pay more for the meat while ranchers bear the financial brunt of climate change.
Meanwhile, North American grasslands, a major carbon sink, are increasingly at risk as drought drives reliance on grain feed, whose production can chip away at grassland habitat.
Beef production is a major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter. For every kilogram of meat, cattle produce 9-10 times more the equivalent amount of CO2 than pigs and chickens.
The cattle industry’s carbon footprint, estimated at 7% of global GHG emissions in 2015, could grow as droughts erode grassland’s ability to store carbon.
The price of tenderness
Grain farmer and feedlot owner Brad Welter keeps about 300 cattle per pen, a total of 26,000 if all the pens are full. From May to October 2025, he said his company Poundmaker has been doing well financially, despite ranchers in Saskatchewan also having to downsize their herds.
Welter said slaughterhouses set the ceiling for obesity, and those in Alberta who buy his cattle have kept raising it.
“Anything over 950 [lb – 430kg] carcass weight used to be an overweight deduction, but now the average would be higher than that,” Welter said.
“It used to be [about] the way they liked to cut the carcasses, what they could sell and the size of the cuts. They concentrate more now on throughput at the plant,” he explained.
“If they slaughter 1,300lb [590kg] or 1,500lb [680kg] animals they slaughter as many heads, but they have way more tons. The size doesn’t matter so much anymore,” Welter added.
Beef cattle’s diet and mobility are strictly controlled for profits and tenderness. Unlike cows and bulls who can be kept up to 20 years for breeding, steers raised for meat do not move much throughout their short lifespan of 1-2 years. Adrenaline is a big contributor to meat toughness, rancher Travis Eklund in Alberta told Mekong Eye.
Within the confines of the pen, they scatter when spotting a stranger, watch in stillness until the threat is deemed safe, then cheekily plod over.
At Welter’s feedlot, the males are initially fed hay, gradually transitioned to a grain diet and boosted with six types of US & Canada-approved, but EU-banned growth hormones. The feeder said hormone use is strictly financial, boosting returns from C$40 to C$60 per animal.
Bulking the animals up quickly with grains and slaughtering them early has been a Canadian strategy to reduce the industry’s life cycle GHG emission, said Gabriel Ribeiro, sustainable production researcher at the University of Saskatchewan.
Most cattle in Canada are slaughtered between 12 and 18 months of age, compared with about 2-3 years in some other countries, Ribeiro told Mekong Eye.
Cattle may belch more methane each day on a grain diet than a fiber-rich one, he said, but they emit less over their lifetime.
“It’s quite challenging to reduce methane directly without affecting other things,” Ribeiro added. A newly approved feed additive can cut methane emissions by about 30%, but producers are hesitant to adopt due to its high cost.
“That’s an area we are still trying to figure out,” said Ribeiro.
A castrated male, or steer, enjoys his freedom the most during the first six months with his mom.
For more tender meat and for peace of mind, the Laings have abandoned some old ranching practices and are testing out new ones.
They no longer brand their cattle with hot iron, a laborious, painful tradition that is still practiced by 50% of producers in Alberta, according to Cattle Welfare.
“If you look at a group of calves that have been roped and branded, they’re sulking for a couple days. [It’s] like you’ve kind of hurt them a little bit,” said John Laing.
They also try to massage the calf after he is castrated and eartagged at about a day old, to comfort both the mom and the baby. After weaning, calves get to talk to their mom about two weeks across a fence, before heading off to feedlots. To ease their stress, the ranchers apply a pheromone similar to the mom’s scent on each calf.
The ranchers say a mother never mistakes her baby.
“If there were 100 in this tent and they were all mixed up,” John Laing said, “there would be a cow calling and somehow she would go right for a calf. It’d be like being in the most crowded subway or mall and as a mom, you know where your baby is and they are the same.”
Without gentle handling, many calves constantly cry for their mom, and cows could put up a fight, the Laings said. There might be ropes involved.
Underneath the pasture
“There’s a very large amount of carbon in the soils here,” said Eric Lamb, ecology researcher at the University of Saskatchewan, pointing at the university conservation plot.
“Most of these plants’ biomass is below ground. If we weigh it, it would be up to 10 times more root biomass than above ground biomass,” he explained.
Grasslands are carbon sinks as important as tropical forests, yet the researcher said only 30% of Canada’s original grasslands remain due to cropland conversion, invasive species and expansion of the oil and gas industry.
While most were plowed for crops a century ago, the loss continues: 2–2.5 million acres of Great Plains grasslands were converted to cropland each year over the past decade, WWF data shows.
Grasslands need to be disturbed regularly, either by grazing or fires, to not grow into woodlands, said Lamb. More than a century ago, bison, herded by First Nation people, roamed The Great Plains and kept the ecosystem intact.
After First Nation people were displaced in the late 19th century, cattle herders took over the land. Cattle grazing altered the landscape, though many ranchers eventually managed to figure out the sustainable grazing rates.
“With cattle, you have to figure out how to get them to move. If you put your mineral block at the far end of the pasture and the water at the other end, then they’re forced to walk back and forth, but they are not going to do it by choice,” Lamb explained.
Travis Eklund, who runs a 300-head cow-calf ranch in Alberta, said he had to install solar-powered watering systems on hilltops and fenced off parts of his ranch to prevent cows from overgrazing creekside areas.
He once tried to expand his herd, but saw with his own eyes that the grass and creeks suffered.
With land increasingly squeezed by urban growth and crop expansion, Eklund only hopes his herd size stays steady as droughts ravage, unlike many ranches across the country.
Across North America, grasslands face a losing battle. Researchers at the University of Alberta in 2024 found that intense short-term droughts driven by climate change can clip plant growth by 60% and its carbon sequestration ability.
Forage shortages can drive up feed costs and spur cropland expansion, further threatening grassland habitat.
Trickle-down profits
Most Canadian beef exports are grain-fed, much like in the United States. Fully grass-fed beef remains niche and costly, typically sold directly from farm to consumer within Canada, Scott Wright, Director of the Livestock and Forage Centre of Excellence at the University of Saskatchewan told Mekong Eye.
The industry relies heavily on exports, Wright says. On domestic consumption alone, he said, “the ranchers would have to close up shop.”
In 2024, Viet Nam imported about 14% of Canada’s frozen beef and offal, UN Comtrade data shows.
Two major multinational slaughterhouses, Cargill and JBS, process about 85% of the country’s output. The two, together with Tyson Foods and National Beef, run the scene in the US and are under investigation for potential collusion and price manipulation.
In Australia, the largest family-owned meatpacker, Teys, was absorbed into Cargill in 2025.
Since 2020, ranchers in the US have been far more devastated than their Canadian peers. One rancher, More Perfect Union reported, contemplated suicide as he faced bankruptcy.
Most ranchers in Canada are just trying to keep traditions alive, the Laings told Mekong Eye. Laura holds side consultancy jobs that make up 10-15% of their income.
“It would be rare to find a place that doesn’t have that dual income, especially in the drought years,” Laing said.
The couple, not seeing the end of droughts, have started looking for ways to retain the current limited amount of water, like fencing off creeks and building artificial beaver dams.
Đọt Chuối Non 