Few can suspect that in some slaughterhouses we can find a treasure that surpasses the almighty gold in benefits. It looks like an orange golf ball: it is gallstones that we can find in a small number of cows. Finding it is like getting the winning ticket and its destination is China, where it is highly coveted for traditional medicine.
That is why it is not surprising that a whole fever has been unleashed that has made proliferate a lucrative legal business parallel to another clandestine one, We can even talk about armed gangs in search of ‘bovine gold’ or slaughterhouse workers who use more prosaic methods that consist of hiding this precious stone in their boots. ‘The Wall Street Journal’ highlights that Buyers are willing to pay up to 5,800 dollars (about 5,560 euros) for 28 grams of this nugget of hardened bile, which is twice the price of gold. Therefore, “A single gallstone can be worth more than all the meat on a cow.”say the specialists.
From Viagra to a $60 billion industry
Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and the United States, as beef export places, are also the main export countries of this product. Nevertheless, We can also find previous cases in Spain. In 2021, the press reported that in Asturias the businessman Luis Alberto Sánchez Panero – owner of the Matadero Central de Asturias – declared to the media that the most expensive product he sold was lbeef gallstones, “at forty-five thousand euros per kilo.” And he specified that his Chinese clientele used it “to manufacture Viagra.” And the global search for this product continues.
The truth is that the figures for exports to Hong Kong of this ‘stone’ reveal “a spectacular expansion” In recent years, according to a report by the United States Agricultural Trade Bureau, tripling in just four years.
From herbalists and the Angong pill
Its use is mainly medicinal. Chinese herbalists turn gallbladders into powder mixed with buffalo horn and realgar, which is a reddish arsenic gemstone resulting in the Angong pill. This serves as a remedy to prevent hypertension, and especially strokes which are being the main reason for death in the Asian country. A pair of these pills can reach $200, Donghai Wen, a Chinese-born doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, told WSJ.
It should be noted, in this sense, that the World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that China’s aging population powers an industry worth about $60 billion a year. And its smuggling, in countries like Uruguay, has led to prison sentences for trafficking more than 3 million dollars in bovine gallstones. For prosecutors it is a whole new form of smuggling which, in addition to China, has South Korea and Japan as minor destinations.
While others try to see lucrative business deals in the future. Thus, Argentina closed an agreement to export gallstones to the Asian giant, days before the meeting that the president of the South American country, Javier Milei, would hold with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at the G20 in Rio de Janeiro.
win the lottery
The specialized website ‘Agronegocios’ details that the stones that form in the gallbladder of cattle can have different sizes and colors, and that determines their quality and price.
It is believed that its origin It is due to various deficiencies in nutrition, poor hydration and other health conditions.. “Although there is no pattern, more stones occur in older animals, with feeding and hydration problems,” Andrés Felipe Alzate Gómez, a zootechnist at the University of Antioquia, told ‘Agronegocios’. Therefore, its natural production is rare.
Only two cows in 100 may have gallstones, and they are often small.. And they are only extracted after the animal is dead and, “as large meat producers kill more short-lived cows, their appearance is also limited in meatpackers,” indicates the British BBC channel.
Finding them is complicated, but the French company ox-gallestones.com details on its website that, in addition to great benefits, this product has the strong point that it represents a very succulent additional source of income, because ranchers do not have any additional expenses and do not require any financial investment. And the forecast is that this business will continue to grow, because although China is capable of producing about 1,000 kilos of bovine gallstones per year, it falls short of meeting the demand within the country, which reaches 5,000 kilos.
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