Now the first supermarket chains are listing beef from deforestation regions!

Brazil is the world’s largest beef exporter.
The South American country exports around 2 million t of beef annually, including to the European Union.
But export success is in jeopardy because Brazil has a problem, an image problem.
His agricultural exports are repeatedly associated with the illegal slash and burn in the #Amazonas and in other rainforest areas.
Some large retail chains from the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Great Britain, including Albert Heijn and #Lidl Netherlands, have now pulled the emergency brake.
They are deleting beef and beef products from Brazil in whole or in part.

The “Reporter Brasil”, a network of investigative journalists, and the environmental organization “Mighty Earth” got the ball rolling.
Together they have traced the origins of beef steaks, corned beef and dried meat on the shelves of Albert Heijn, Lidl, Carrefour and Sainsbury’s back to the farms in Brazil.

The reporters uncovered a system they call “Cattle washing ,” based on laundering money, for example, from drug trafficking revenues.
When washing cattle, the animals are briefly kept on farms in regions where there is little or no deforestation in two JBS*plants in São Paulo before they are slaughtered.
This gives them a “clean” origin.

However, these cattle had previously been raised on farms created by illegal slash and burn.
Some of the operators of these farms have been convicted under Brazilian law for illegal logging of rainforests and the destruction of protected areas.

Continue reading “Brazil: the dirty champion of meat export” →