The world’s most expensive cow has been taken to auction, with her own bodyguard and security cameras. Worth $4 million, Viatina-19 FIV Mara Movéis is the most expensive cow ever sold at auction, according to Guinness World Records. That’s three times more than the last recordholder’s price.
And — at 1,100 kilograms (more than 2,400 pounds) — she’s twice as heavy as an average adult of her breed. Brazil has hundreds of millions of cows, but this one in particular is extraordinary. Her massive, snow-white body is watched over by security cameras and an armed guard.
Along a highway through Brazil’s heartland, Viatina-19’s owners have put up two billboards praising her grandeur and beckoning people to make pilgrimages to see the supercow. Climate scientists agree that people need to consume less beef , the largest agricultural source of greenhouse gasses and a driver of Amazon deforestation. But the cattle industry is a major source of Brazilian economic development and the government is striving to conquer new export markets.
The world’s top beef exporter wants everyone, everywhere to eat its beef. The embodiment of Brazil’s cattle ambitions is Viatina-19, the product of years of efforts to raise meatier cows. Prizewinners are sold at high-stakes auctions — so high that wealthy ranchers share ownership.
They extract the eggs and semen from champion animals, create embryos and implant them in surrogate cows that they hope will produce the next magnificent.
