Brazilian chicken export data: volumes and destinations

We are not a trading house and we do not sell you the chicken. We help buyers verify a Brazilian counterparty independently. The figures here come mainly from USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service GAIN reports, which publish Brazil's poultry data with report numbers and dates, and where an industry body's own figure could not be confirmed from its source, the page leaves it out rather than repeat it secondhand. Checked on 8 September 2026.

Export volume

Brazil exported 5.02 million tonnes of chicken in 2025, up 3.72 percent on the year before, and USDA forecasts 5.2 million tonnes for 2026, a rise of about 4 percent. In 2025 Brazilian chicken reached 166 countries.

Year	Volume	Basis	Note
2025	5.02 million tonnes	Including paws	Actual, up 3.72% year on year
2025	4.97 million tonnes	Excluding paws	USDA's separate estimate on the without-paws basis
2026	5.2 million tonnes	Excluding paws	Forecast, up about 4%

The basis is not a footnote to skip. USDA reports the volume two ways, one including chicken paws and one without, because paws are a large, separately traded item that mostly goes to a different market. The 2025 figure of 5.02 million tonnes is the with-paws number; USDA's without-paws estimate for the same year is 4.97 million tonnes. The gap between the two, around 50,000 tonnes, is not a rounding difference, it is a whole category of product moving on its own terms. If you compare a Brazilian figure to a USDA figure and they refuse to reconcile, the basis is usually why, so check whether both are counting paws before you conclude the numbers disagree.

The leading destinations

Two things shape Brazil's destination mix: the Gulf's steady demand for halal chicken, and a set of large Asian and Latin American buyers. The clearest full-year read is for 2025 on the halal side, where the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia sit at the top.

Destination	2025 volume	Change year on year
United Arab Emirates	480,070 tonnes	up 5.5%
Saudi Arabia	397,180 tonnes	up 7.1%

The United Arab Emirates alone accounted for roughly 37.4 percent of the top five destinations in 2025, which gives a sense of how concentrated the Gulf demand is at the top of the table.

A second, earlier cut covers January to August 2025 and picks up the non-halal buyers alongside the Gulf. It is a cumulative eight-month figure, not a full year, so it is not comparable line for line with the full-year numbers above, but it shows the shape of the wider destination mix.

Destination (Jan to Aug 2025, cumulative)	Volume
United Arab Emirates	315,550 tonnes
Japan	271,500 tonnes
Saudi Arabia	260,500 tonnes
Mexico	163,400 tonnes

China is absent from that list for a specific reason: it suspended purchases of Brazilian chicken after the May 2025 avian influenza case, so its volume for the period does not reflect normal trade. That suspension, and the wider way disease status moves this trade, is covered on the halal and certifications page.

The China point is worth dwelling on because it shows what these tables can and cannot tell you. A destination that drops out of a period's data has not necessarily stopped buying in any lasting sense; it may be sitting behind a temporary suspension tied to disease status. So a destination table is a photograph of a moment, and the moment matters. Reading the January to August 2025 cut without knowing that China was suspended for part of it would lead you to the wrong conclusion about China's normal weight in the trade. The same caution applies in reverse: a market that looks large in one period can shrink in the next if a restriction lands. Pair any destination figure with the disease and regionalisation position for that period before you build a plan on it.

The Gulf and halal

Brazil is the largest supplier of halal chicken in the world, with more than two million tonnes exported to Muslim markets each year. The destination tables above show why that matters commercially: the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are two of Brazil's largest single buyers, and the Gulf's demand is a structural feature of the trade rather than a swing factor.

For a buyer in that market, the volume is the easy part. The harder part is that the halal certificate on Gulf-bound chicken has to come from a body the Gulf recognises, which for those markets means GAC accreditation, and the government does not certify halal itself. The commercial pull of the numbers on this page is exactly why that verification step is worth doing carefully rather than assuming. The detail sits on the halal and certifications page, and the plant and company checks are on the verifying a poultry exporter page.

The concentration also has a practical read for a buyer who is not in the Gulf. When two destinations take a large, growing share of a supplier's output, they set the tone for availability and price in the periods they are buying hard. That is a reason to know the destination mix even if your own market is a smaller line on the table, because the big buyers move the supply you are drawing from. The figures here are the ones to watch for that: the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia both grew in 2025, by 5.5 and 7.1 percent respectively, on already large bases.

What we did not lift, and why

Brazil's poultry export figures are published by two kinds of source, and they do not always match on the surface. USDA's GAIN reports are one. ABPA, the Brazilian Animal Protein Association, is the other, and its annual figures, including record export numbers for 2025, are widely repeated by the trade press.

This page uses the USDA figures because they were confirmed from the first-party report, with a number and a date attached. The ABPA figures were not lifted here. That is a deliberate choice, not an oversight: the specific annual numbers ABPA publishes were not taken directly from ABPA's own source while this page was prepared, so attaching a precise tonnage to "ABPA" would mean repeating a figure at second hand and presenting it as confirmed. If you need the ABPA numbers, take them from ABPA directly. The volumes on this page are the USDA ones, and they are labelled as such.

The same discipline applies to the basis problem. Where USDA and a Brazilian body appear to disagree on a volume, the gap is often the paws basis rather than a real difference, and the fix is to line up the basis before concluding anything. Averaging two figures from two sources that count differently would produce a number that is true of neither.

Reading the figures for a decision

For a buyer, three things carry over from all of this. The headline volume is 5.02 million tonnes for 2025 and a 5.2 million tonne forecast for 2026, on the bases noted. The Gulf, led by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, is the concentrated core of the halal trade and a large share of the total. And any single figure is only as good as its basis and its date, which is why every number here carries both.

The pages alongside this one cover the parts a volume figure does not: verifying a poultry exporter for the company and plant, halal and certifications for the certificate and the disease status, pre-shipment inspection for the goods, and payment terms for how the money moves.

Sources

• 2025 chicken export volume 5.02 million tonnes including paws, up 3.72% year on year; 4.97 million tonnes excluding paws; 2026 forecast 5.2 million tonnes excluding paws, up about 4%; 166 destination countries in 2025: USDA FAS GAIN Poultry Semi-annual, report BR2026-0012, published 10 March 2026, first-party. Confirmed.
• Top halal destinations 2025, United Arab Emirates 480,070 tonnes (up 5.5%, about 37.4% of the top five) and Saudi Arabia 397,180 tonnes (up 7.1%): USDA FAS GAIN, report BR2026-0012. Confirmed.
• January to August 2025 cumulative destinations, United Arab Emirates 315,550 tonnes, Japan 271,500 tonnes, Saudi Arabia 260,500 tonnes, Mexico 163,400 tonnes, with China suspended after the May 2025 avian influenza case: USDA FAS GAIN Poultry Annual, report BR2025-0038, published 29 September 2025, first-party. Confirmed. The period is cumulative eight-month, not a full year, and is not directly comparable to full-year figures.
• Brazil as the largest halal chicken supplier, more than two million tonnes to Muslim markets annually: USDA FAS GAIN, report BR2026-0012. Confirmed.
• ABPA annual figures: not lifted. ABPA publishes annual poultry export data, including record 2025 numbers repeated by the trade press, but the specific figures were not taken from ABPA's own source while this page was prepared, so no precise tonnage is attributed to ABPA here. Take those figures from ABPA directly.

Facts on this page were checked on 8 September 2026. Export volumes and destination mixes change year to year, and disease status can reshape a destination table within weeks. Confirm the current figures from USDA FAS or ABPA before relying on any number here.