Some of the firms now calling on Bolsonaro to protect the Amazon – including Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Asda, Lidl, Carrefour and Princes – have been found by Earthsight to sell Brazilian beef from a company repeatedly implicated in illegal deforestation
Deforestation for cattle in the Amazon.
This week dozens of firms and
investors published an open
letter aimed at Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro urging him to
protect the Amazon from further deforestation for soy cultivation.
The 87 signatories include major
retailers Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, Asda, Carrefour, Iceland, Marks &
Spencer, Waitrose and Morrisons, as well as food producers Princes and Mars,
and investment
firms managing over $3 trillion of assets that include Robeco, BMO
Global Asset Management, and Legal & General Investment Management.
The letter calls on the Brazilian
government to maintain the Amazon
Soy Moratorium (ASM), an industry voluntary agreement signed in 2006
that committed traders not to source soy from farmers implicated in fresh
deforestation, slave labour or invasion of indigenous lands.
The signatories said: “We want to
be able to continue to source from, or invest in, the Brazilian soy industry
but if the ASM is not maintained, this will risk our business with Brazilian
soy.”
The letter comes in response to
a campaign by
Aprosoja, a Brazilian association of soy producers, to end the moratorium.
Aprosoja claims to have Bolsonaro’s support.
Recent Earthsight research shows
that some of the firms now calling on Bolsonaro to protect the Amazon from
deforestation linked to soy – Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Lidl, Carrefour and
Princes – have been selling Brazilian beef from a company repeatedly implicated
in forest destruction.
Following the recent Amazon fires
Earthsight revealed that Sainsbury’s and Morrisons were selling products made with beef from JBS, a Brazilian firm caught up in a stream of scandals involving illegal
deforestation, slave labour, rotten meat and the systematic bribery of
politicians.
UK supermarkets continue to sell corned beef sourced from JBS in Brazil.
In 2017, two JBS-owned slaughterhouses bought nearly 50,000 heads of cattle from ranches guilty of illegal deforestation in the Amazon. The firm was fined £6.5 million.
JBS, the world’s
largest meatpacker, also stands accused of having purchased thousands of heads
of cattle from a farm owned by a notorious Brazilian cattle rancher known as
Jotinha, who was arrested in relation to a massive illegal deforestation case
in 2016.
In late August US campaign
group Mighty
Earth identified JBS as being the firm most likely to be linked
to the Amazon fires, based on the location of its slaughterhouses.
Morrisons use the Brazilian
firm’s corned beef for their own-brand offering, while some of the Princes
corned beef stocked in Sainsbury’s also originates from the São Paulo company.
In May an
Earthsight investigation named Lidl and Asda along with Italian brand
Simmenthal and European retailer Carrefour as stocking JBS corned beef.
At the time Earthsight’s researchers found different varieties of Princes
corned beef supplied by JBS at Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons.
An online petition demanding
Morrisons to stop selling JBS beef, triggered by Earthsight’s research, had
garnered 260,000 signatures as of early December. Yet neither Morrisons nor any
of the other companies named have yet committed to take the products off their
shelves.
Earthsight Director Sam Lawson
said: “The hypocrisy exhibited by these firms is shocking. Sending this letter
suggests they are friends of the forest. But if so, why do they insist on
continuing to stock suspect Brazilian beef? All for a few pence more profit.”
Aprosoja – as well as some of
the largest
soy traders – also oppose efforts to extend the soy moratorium to the
Cerrado, a biodiverse savannah in Brazil and a major frontier
of recent soy expansion.
Abiove, which represents soy traders in Brazil, has voiced concern that the overturn of the moratorium would put $5 billion of European imports of Brazilian soy at risk. The moratorium has been credited with reducing deforestation for soy in the Amazon by as much as 80 per cent in some areas.
