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Brazil provides more than a quarter of EU beef imports
Up to a fifth of Brazil’s soy exports to the European Union may be “contaminated” by illegal deforestation, according to a study.
The researchers used freely available maps and data to identify specific farms and ranches that cut forests to produce soy and beef destined for Europe.
They found that 2% of properties were responsible for 62% of illegal deforestation.
These “bad apples” have global environmental consequences, they said.
Professor Raoni Rajão, from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil, said it was up to the country’s political and economic leaders to eradicate “rotten apples in the soy and meat sectors.”
“Brazil has the information it needs to take swift and decisive action against these rule-breakers to ensure that its exports are free from deforestation,” he said.
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Forest fires in the Amazon in 2019 led to global protests
What does the study show?
Reports from non-governmental organizations and journalistic investigations have previously revealed cases of soybean and beef production in deforestation and export areas.
But this is the first study linking illegal deforestation at the property level with export data.
The research, published in the journal Science, found that 2% of properties in the Amazon rainforest and grasslands of the Cerrado are responsible for 62% of all potentially illegal deforestation.
Approximately 20% of soy exports and at least 17% of meat exports to the EU may be “tainted with illegal deforestation,” the researchers said.
According to their analysis, two million tonnes of soybeans grown on properties with illegal deforestation may have reached EU markets annually during the analysis period, 500,000 of which come from the Amazon.
Because soy is primarily fed to livestock, customers cannot be sure if the meat they buy is “deforestation free.”
Duncan Brack of the Chatham House think tank said the study strengthened the case for government action to end the UK consumer’s contribution to deforestation, such as a due diligence obligation or an obligation to care for companies that import products such as beef or soy. .
What is the scale of the problem?
A recent report found that the majority of all soy (65%) comes from countries with high deforestation rates. The land required abroad to meet the UK’s annual demand for soybeans between 2016 and 2018 was equivalent to an area close to the size of Wales, according to environmental groups WWF and RSPB.
“We are unknowingly eating meat and dairy products from animals fed on soybeans grown on deforested land in Brazil,” said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF-UK.
“We need to stop importing habitat destruction.”
In 2019, an area of primary forest the size of a soccer field was lost every six seconds around the world, according to a study by the University of Maryland, USA.
Brazil accounted for a third of it, its worst loss in 13 years, apart from the huge spikes in fires in 2016 and 2017.
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