U.S. red meat complements local ingredients in Honduras tourism industryU.S. red meat complements local ingredients in Honduras tourism industry
Strong demand in Honduras helped fuel a record-breaking year for U.S. pork exports to Central America in 2024; one of the best years on record for beef exports to the region.
January 14, 2025

Strong demand from the restaurant and hospitality sectors helped drive U.S. red meat exports to Central America to new heights in 2024. With data available through November, pork exports to the region already reached an annual record of $450 million. Beef exports to Central America were also very strong, with value increasing 9% year-over-year to $147 million.
The U.S. Meat Export Federation recently hosted a series of training seminars for chefs of resorts and hotels across Honduras. USMEF Mexico Corporate Chef Germán Navarrete worked with the chefs to develop new feature items for their menus.
"Honduras has become, in the in recent years, a very important tourist destination especially Roatan, which is an island right in the Atlantic. And there we carried out a series of seminars for hotels and restaurants in the region so they know very well how to use and how to create some new proposals using U.S. beef and U.S. pork. We actually gave them a series of ingredients, just actually kind of a market of ingredients, where they could choose from whatever they wanted, whatever they needed, so they could come up with some dishes according to the taste of their customers and the tourists that visit the region," says Navarrete. "This is really like a paradise, so people are going there to have a good time, to eat well, so having these wonderful creations that they came up with will be a very good way of keeping them coming back and giving them a wonderful experience that only U.S. beef and U.S. pork can provide."
Chef Navarrete, who is based in Mexico City but conducts educational seminars in a wide range of markets, taught the chefs about cutting and preparing various cuts of U.S. beef and pork and showcased the quality and versatility of the U.S. product. Each chef was then presented with a box of U.S. beef and pork along with a wide variety of local ingredients in order to develop new menu feature items. The seminars were designed to build utilization of U.S. red meat in the growing tourism sector in Honduras.
"People really want, yes, good U.S. product, but also they want a local taste," says Navarrete. "So it was fascinating to see what they came up with using plantains, using mangoes, using coconut, which applied to all these wonderful U.S. beef and pork products. I mean, the outcome was absolutely outstanding. And I actually took some very good ideas for myself and for other regions around the world."
The seminars were funded through support from Wisconsin Beef Council and USDA.
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