- The government of Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state has banned shark meat for meals in most of the schools it manages, after pressure from conservationists and school meal advisers raising health and environmental concerns.
- The shark meat ban applies to all 1,200 schools run by the state education department, but not to the thousands of other schools in the state that are managed by municipalities and private entities.
- A Mongabay investigation in July 2025 revealed 1,012 public tenders issued since 2004 to procure more than 5,400 metric tons of shark meat in 10 of Brazil’s 26 states, including Rio de Janeiro.
- Industry groups have criticized the Rio de Janeiro government’s decision, dismissing health risks linked to shark meat consumption, and complained of a lack of transparency in the decision-making process, noting that the ban has yet to be published in the state’s official gazette.
RIO DE JANEIRO — The government of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro has banned shark meat for meals in most of the schools it manages, citing health and environmental concerns. The move puts the state in line to become the first in Brazil to do so, and has drawn accolades from shark conservation and health advocates, on the one hand, and criticism from the seafood industry, on the other.
“The suspension was based on technical, scientific, health, and environmental grounds … complying with the principle of precaution and comprehensive protection of children” as required under the Constitution and the guidelines of the National School Feeding Program, the state department of education told Mongabay in an emailed statement on Jan. 8. It said the decision to ban shark meat in school meals rested on evidence from the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a research institute affiliated with Brazil’s health ministry.
Effective since Oct. 23, 2025, the shark meat ban was enacted through an administrative guideline emailed that day to the 1,200 schools run by the Rio de Janeiro state education department. These schools account for 95% of all schools managed by the state. The ban doesn’t apply to the roughly 10,400 other schools in the state that are managed by municipalities or private institutions.
The guideline, seen by Mongabay, was signed by the education department’s food safety coordinator, Lívia Ribera Souza. It cited a technical note from marine conservation NGO Sea Shepherd Brazil and the National Forum of School Feeding Councils, which presented “scientific evidence on the risks to human health and the environment arising from the consumption of ‘cação’ (shark and ray) meat.”
Although shark meat is neither being procured nor included in the menus for state-run schools, its purchase and preparation is now “strictly prohibited,” Souza wrote in the guideline. She recommended the purchase of tilapia fillets “as they have low heavy metal concentrations, are well accepted by consumers, and are widely available on the market, meeting nutritional quality and health safety criteria.”
A Mongabay investigation published in July 2025 revealed 1,012 public tenders issued since 2004 to procure more than 5,400 metric tons of shark meat in 10 of Brazil’s 26 states, including Rio de Janeiro. The exposé identified no shark purchases for schools by the Rio de Janeiro education department, but did find that other state offices and municipalities within the state had issued tenders seeking to purchase almost half a metric ton of shark meat, though not exclusively for schools. Such purchases are not subject to the new ban. Mongabay reached out to all of these shark-procuring state departments and municipalities, but only the Petrópolis and Cabo Frio municipal governments replied, saying they no longer buy cação.
Sharks are apex predators, so their tissues tend to accumulate high levels of heavy metals like mercury and arsenic. These can harm human health if ingested in large enough quantities, especially in young children and other vulnerable populations.
Overfishing both for shark fins, considered a delicacy in East Asia, and for shark meat, which is increasingly consumed in many countries around the world, is pushing many shark and ray species toward extinction.
Brazil is the world’s largest consumer and importer of shark meat. But as shark meat is packaged and sold in the country under the generic name cação, rather than tubarão, the Portuguese word for shark, Brazilians tend not to know what kind of fish they’re eating. Such mislabeling can also allow the sale of threatened species as cação, studies show.
Nathalie Gil, head of Sea Shepherd Brazil, said the Mongabay investigation exposing shark meat procurements by public institutions in Rio de Janeiro state, alongside her NGO’s findings that federally run schools in the state had purchased large quantities of shark meat, spurred her NGO to send the technical note to the education department advocating for the ban.
Sandra Pedroso, who represented the National Forum of School Feeding Councils in the technical note, said she was “shocked” by the widespread shark meat procurements revealed in Mongabay’s investigation. “What shocks me most is the lack of awareness and care about what you eat,” Pedroso, also an adviser to the school feeding council for Rio de Janeiro state, told Mongabay by phone.
José Truda Palazzo Junior, a member of the National Environmental Council (CONAMA), an advisory and deliberative body in charge of the country’s environmental norms and standards, said other Brazilian jurisdictions should follow the Rio de Janeiro education department’s decision, given the health risks posed to children and the conservation concerns for sharks.
“The Brazilian executive branch, from the president to the mayors, has the power to stop these sales,” Truda, who is also a founder of the Humpback Whale Institute, a conservation NGO, said by phone. “It’s time for the politicians in the executive branch to take responsibility.”
Industry groups have defended shark meat consumption, telling Mongabay that it’s healthy and safe to eat.
The Brazilian Association for the Promotion of Fish (ABRAPES) said in an email to Mongabay that it viewed the Rio de Janeiro shark meat ban “with concern” because it restricts “nutritious and affordable options for thousands of students.”
“The consumption of cação is completely legal and safe,” ABRAPES wrote. “Public data show contamination rates close to zero. This state ban does not change the fact that, at the federal level, cação is approved and certified.”
In an emailed statement, the trade group Union of Shipowners and Fishing Industries of Itajaí and Region (SINDIPI) said cação in school meals has become a “strategic tool for introducing fish into children’s diets.” This choice, it added, was based on “food safety, since the absence of bones drastically minimizes the risk of accidents while children are eating, and on acceptability, because its meat has a mild flavor and firm texture.”
SINDIPI said it respects state management guidelines, but the focus “should be on expanding access to quality fish, ensuring that the population enjoys the high nutritional value of this protein.”
A ‘fragile’ ban?
To become the first Brazilian state to ban shark meat from school meals, Rio de Janeiro must still formalize the ban in the state’s official gazette, conservationists say.
In 2021, the municipality of Santos in São Paulo state became the first city in Brazil to enact a ban on shark meat for school meals. The same year, the city of São Paulo canceled a tender for 650 metric tons of shark meat for school meals; while it hasn’t bought shark for schools ever since, it never legally formalized a ban, Gil said. Likewise, Paraná state stopped buying shark meat for school meals after a making a final 650-metric-ton procurement for more than 2,000 schools in 2022, but it never issued a formal ban.
While conservationists and school meal advisers said they expect Rio de Janeiro to publish its shark meat ban in the gazette and thus formalize it, industry representatives criticized the state for promulgating it via email instead.
Cadu Villaça, head of the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Collective (CONEPE), an industry trade group, called the state’s email ban “fragile” and said the state lacked “transparency” for failing to publish it in the official gazette, given the government’s duty to inform the population of public policies.
“That’s how things are done, that’s how you play fair. Once it’s been published, it’s disclosed, based on sound reasoning, with integrity, with grounds, with crystal-clear transparency,” Villaça told Mongabay in a text message.
In its statement, ABRAPES said it’s open to collaborating with the Rio de Janeiro state government to provide information for decision-making and avoid total exclusion of cação from education department procurements. “We believe in dialogue between authorities, scientists, and the sector as a tool for balanced solutions,” it stated.
The state education department didn’t respond to Mongabay’s request for comment on whether the ban would be published in the official gazette.
At the federal level, a proposed bill to ban federal purchases of shark meat remains stalled in the Brazilian lower house’s Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development since 2023.
Edris Queiroz, a shark expert and director of the Brazilian nonprofit Institute of Marine Biology and Environment, said shark meat sales should have been banned nationwide a long time ago. Beyond the wide range of studies leaving “no room for discussion” about the risks its consumption poses to human health, there are also increasing conservation risks to sharks.
“It is the top animal in the [marine] food chain,” Queiroz told Mongabay by phone. “If fishing continues, we will wipe them out. And then what? What about the ecological balance? Think about the damage this will cause in the medium to long term.”
Banner image: Students eating school meals at a public school in the Brazilian state of Bahia. Image by Adenilson Nunes/SECOM (CC BY 2.0).
Additional reporting by Philip Jacobson.
Karla Mendes is a staff investigative and feature reporter for Mongabay in Brazil and the first Brazilian to win the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism. A member of the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network, she is also the first Brazilian and Latin American ever elected to the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ); she was also nominated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) chair. Read her stories published on Mongabay here. Find her on 𝕏, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads and Bluesky.
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