Meet Viatina-19, the world's most expensive cow worth 21 million reais ($4.2 million)

Описание: (4 Jun 2024)

FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4498228

RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Uberaba, 26 April 2024
1. Various of cow named Viatina-19 at the Agropecuaria Napemo farm
LOCATION: UBERABA, BRAZIL
2. Farm worker showing a cellphone with monitoring images of Viatina-19
3. Viatina-19 being monitored by a camera
4. Viatina-19 being cleaned
VOICEOVER: This is Viatina-19. She is one of Brazil’s 235 million cows in a country with more cows than people. But she’s exceptional, she is physically massive, considered as close to perfection as a cow can be.
Monitored 24 hours a day she is the world’s most expensive according to the Guinness World Records.
Her total value — a massive 4.1 million dollars.
5. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Cleiton Borges, Viatina-19 veterinarian:
“In summary, I would say that Viatina is a combo. She combines breed beauty, reproductive capacity, modern genealogy, all in a single animal.”
6. Various of Viatina-19 eating
7. Aerial of the cattle shed ++MUTE++
8. Viatina-19 entering in the cattle shed
9. Aerial of the farm ++MUTE ++VOICEOVER:
VOICEOVER: Breeders are betting big that cows like Viatina-19 can boost production in Brazil, already the world’s biggest beef exporter, but also beyond.
10. Ney Pereira co-owner of Viatina-19
19 walking after arriving in the farm in a helicopter
11. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Ney Pereira, 48-year-old co-owner of Viatina-19:
“She can’t be limited to just Brazil. If she is the best in the world, not just her price, but I believe she is the world’s best, we need to share her around the world. And the commercial way to do that is to export its genetics, and we are going to seek that path going forward."

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Uberaba, 27 April 2024
12. Various of Geneal lab (Geneal Animal Genetics and Biotechnology) employee working

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Uberaba, 26 April 2024
13. Farm worker walking with Viatina-19
VOICEOVER: Now there are more Viatinas in the making. Her DNA has been extracted to create embryos, 10 surrogates are pregnant with clones of her and she’s pregnant herself for the first time.
STORYLINE:
Brazil has more cows than people – about 235 million of them — but one in particular is extraordinary.

White as snow with a massive body, she is watched over by security cameras and an armed bodyguard.

The cow named Viatina-19 lives on a farm in Uberaba, Minas Gerais state, and is the most expensive ever sold at auction, according to Guinness World Records.

A 33% stake sold last year put her total value at 21 million reais ($4.1 million) — more than triple the prior recordholder, a Holstein heifer in Vermont in 1985.

She is the product of what one might call “moo-genics”: improving cattle stock by implanting bespoke embryos into surrogate cows known as “rental bellies”, selling top individuals at high-stakes auctions and also cloning them.

But she's also the embodiment of Brazilian cattle ambitions.

Breeders in this area are betting big that Viatina-19 and other behemoth bovines are key to boosting production in Brazil — already the world’s biggest beef exporter.

Viatina-19 is newly pregnant, and for her first time, which helps maintain hormone cycles, according to one of her owners, Ney Pereira.

He’s eyeing expansion for his four-legged fortune; already her oocytes sold in Bolivia and he wants to export to the United Arab Emirates, India and the US.


AP Video by Mario Lobão, Produced by Tatiana Pollastri

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