Cow gallstones are big business. Gallstones are prized for their medicinal uses. And a nice fat cow gallstone can sell on the black market for tens of thousands of dollars.
VICE has covered the illicit cow gallstone trade before—shining a spotlight on the international trade while focusing on Australian slaughterhouse workers making some money on the side by selling rare gallstones. Today, the Wall Street Journal has a whole new report on the same subject but shifts the focus to Brazil’s gallstone trade.
The illegal trade of gallstones has exploded in Brazil in recent years, for the same reasons it exploded everywhere else. That reason? The alternative medicine market. Gallstones are used to help treat a variety of conditions, like obesity and hypertension.
Brazilians Are Selling Cow Gallstones For Thousands
Gallstones are essentially hardened wads of bile formed by crystals that gradually grow in the gallbladder. They can sell for $5,800 per ounce on the black market, making cow gallstones more valuable than gold. Gallstones have joined the ranks of high-end cheeses as unusual targets for thieves who sell them for an enormous amount via illicit trade.
Brazil is the world’s leading beef exporter. As you can imagine, what with the gallstone black market thriving, Brazil has seen a wave of violent gallstone heists, like one heist in São João da Boa Vista where armed robbers tied up the owners of the farm along with their six-year-old grandson and stole $50,000 worth of gallstones.
The sale of gallstones isn’t illegal in Brazil but operates as if it were, with the market functioning through underground dealers seeking to hide their sales from tax collectors and federal regulators. The price of gallstones in Brazil is likely to rise even higher thanks to a shift in Brazilian farming practices—a wild thought considering that some Brazilian cattle farmers can sell a single gallstone for more money than the collective meat of the cow it came from.
Younger cattle yield more meat and milk than older cattle, which is good for the farmer and the consumer, unless that consumer is a member of the illicit gallstone trade. Younger cattle fed higher-quality, more nutrient-rich feed that makes them grow faster, do not live long enough to develop gallstones. But that’s not stopping some desperate farmers from trying to dream up ways to specifically raise cows that develop gallstones.
It’s just too bad no one knows how to do that.
The post Smugglers Are Robbing Slaughterhouses—for Their Cow Parts appeared first on VICE.
