Mercado de Liniers - Liniers Cattle Market
Liniers cattle market is the major livestock trade centre of the country, holding several particular characteristics that make it unique worldwide. Bidding between byers take place here daily, and the so settled final price rule the value for the whole national livestock.
Liniers Market is the place where livestock broker's firms carry out their commercial activities, and a varying amount from 12,000 to 18,000 cattle are auction sold for slaughter every day. It has an extension of 34 hectares; holds about 4,000 workers;counts on 32 piers, 450 entry and exit pens for cattle, 40 automatic scales, 2000 small exhibitions pens distributed among broker's firms, and provided room for several television and radio broadcasts,besides government representations for commercial, fiscal and sanitary control.
Daily activities initiate with the arrival and unloading of cattle (from6 pm to 5 am next morning). Data from the Transport Guide are then checked and entered into a numbered report issue by a specific software program, which identifies every particular batch from then on, during every step of the operations developed within the Market's premises. At this point, a sanitary control also takes place. Animals are then sent to the different broker's pens, being immediately classified and weighed on a test basis by the firm's employees. Auction sales start at 8 am. Each batch is painted with the byer's identification number, before being definitely weighed. Thereafter, cattle are reloaded on trucks and transported to the corresponding slaughterhouse.
An Extraction Guide is then issued, which includes all data concerning animals, buyers and transport vehicles. Liniers Market concentrates about 20% of the whole national slaughter, and 50 % of that corresponding to Buenos Aires surroundings. Representatives of meat processors, butchers, supermarkets and slaughterhouses attend the Marke't sales for purchasing cattle, and the results of their bidding makes it possible to estimate the final day-by -day livestock value.This market played a major role for the promotion and development of Argentine livestock production activity, becoming a part of the whole economy.
