Meat from Amazon Deforestation Banned

Posted by: lindsey | 12 Jun 09 | Leave a comment

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As you may know by now, Greenpeace released a report June 1 called Slaughtering the Amazon, which demonstrated the connections between the cattle sector and deforestation. Today we saw one of our first major victories as Brazilian retailers banned meat from cattle that were raised in deforested areas in the Amazon.

As the Reuters piece points out:

"CBD, Wal-Mart and Carrefour will ban beef purchased from farms accused by the Para state prosecutors office of deforestation and will demand documents from slaughterhouses related to the transit of the cattle, Abras said.

The companies also intend to conduct an independent audit to assure that meat that they buy is not from deforested areas."

Here in the US we are not a large importer of Brazilian beef that could be driving deforestation in the Amazon but we do suspect ties to US companies using leather from illegal cattle ranching in the Amazon. While we focus on the campaign to get Nike, Timberland, Adidas, and others to prove the leather in our shoes is not from destroyed Amazon, our colleagues in Brazil are keeping the pressure on the their domestic meat sector which is the other half of the cattle-related deforestation equation.

- Lindsey

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