Western appetite for beef 'destroying Amazon'
Illegal ranching is responsible for one in eight hectares of rainforest being destroyed
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Monday, 01, Jun 2009 05:40
Western demand for beef products is fuelling the rapid destruction of the Brazilian Amazon, Greenpeace has warned.
The charity says that illegal deforestation, sometimes involving slavery or giant processing facilities, is seeing one hectare of Amazonian rainforest lost to cattle ranchers every 18 seconds.
In a three-year study, entitled Slaughtering the Amazon, published today, a host of British supermarkets are accused of using beef sourced illegally.
"Practically all of us will have some by-product of Amazon destruction in our homes somewhere, whether we like it or not," the report said.
"Effectively, these brands are driving this destruction by buying beef and leather products from unscrupulous suppliers in Brazil."
The Brazilian cattle sector, led by companies JBS, Marfrig and Bertin, is the largest driver of deforestation in the world, responsible for every one in every eight hectares destroyed globally.
The country's president Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva's pledge to cut deforestation by three quarters by 2018 came at the same time as a promise to double Brazil's share of the global beef market by 2018.
A "disaster" is brewing because of the twin policies, Greenpeace claims, with campaigner Andre Muggiati saying "everything" was connected to the Amazon.
Today's report adds that in addition to cattle ranchers using illegal deforestation, beef or hides are being shipped thousands of miles for further processing before export.
"In effect, criminal or dirty' supplies of cattle are laundered through the supply chain to an unwitting global market," it claims.
"Expansion by these groups is effectively a 'joint venture' with the Brazilian government."
UK supermarkets named in the report, including Tesco, Asda, and Morrisons, denied that their beef products had any connections to the Amazon.
Greenpeace's report comes ahead of talks scheduled later this year in Bonn to discuss a successor to the expiring Kyoto Protocol.