Mirandesa Meat has been a PDO since 1995, which originated from a small area in the northeast of Portugal, far away from the large consumption centers. It involves 316 producers, from which 180 are organized in a cooperative that manages the PDO. All producers practise small scale family-farm systems. The majority of the producers of Mirandesa Meat are already retired or benefit from multiple sources of income, and only have a small number of cows (average of 8 cows) in a policulture production system.
More than 90% of the Mirandesa meat production is sold in large population centers, with a higher social stratification, located more than 250 km away from the production region. The spatial separation between production and consumers forced the Mirandesa meat producers to adopt three main governance strategies: interactive communication with the consumers through promotion and direct sales in fairs, progression in the value chain via product differentiation and the valuation of the certified dimension of the PDO, and the recognition of Mirandesa meat derivatives like Mirandesa sausage, a Slowfood Presidium.
The interactive communication between producers and consumers, in this context, becomes vital since, due to distance, the consumers lose direct control in the production and the sale of meat. For small producers, the utilization of different kinds of certification is crucial, because through its utilization they have the possibility to positively stand out in the market.
The Mirandesa Meat PDO’s production has been sold out every year since 1998. In the year 2010 it sold 268 t of meat, from 1960 carcasses. On a national scale it is the meat PDO that provides the highest prices to producers (5.25€/Kg). In the production region, non-PDO carcasses of the same type command an average price of only 4€/Kg (a 31% difference)
