Demand for beef speeds destruction of Amazon forest

[Dreamer128]

John Vidal
Friday April 2, 2004
The Guardian

Europe's demand for beef made last year one of the worst ever for Amazonian deforestation, according to an international research report which quotes Brazilian government figures due to be released soon.
Last year satellite pictures showed that almost 10,000 square miles of the world's largest continuous forest was lost, 40% more than in the previous year.

And this year's loss could be greater, says the internationally funded Centre for International Forestry Research (Cifor).

The destruction is being driven by a growing demand for Brazilian beef in Europe because of the fear of mad cow disease and foot and mouth in European herds, yesterday's Cifor report says.

EU countries, it says, now take almost 40% of Brazil's 578,000 tonnes of exported beef. Egypt, Russia and Saudi Arabia between them import 35%.

The US, which has strict beef quota systems to protect its own ranchers, only takes 8%.

"The deforestation is being fuelled by beef exports, with cattle ranchers making mincemeat out of the rainforests," said David Kaimowitz, director general of Cifor and one of the report's authors. He said that logging contributed only indirectly to deforestation.

The Amazon's cattle population more than doubled to 57m between 1990 and 2002, the report says. "[In that time] the percentage of Europe's processed meat imports that came from Brazil rose from 40% to 74%. Markets in Russia and the Middle East are also responsible for much of this new demand for Brazilian beef."

But it plays down US claims that GM-free soya farming for the European market is leading to deforestation.

"Although the last few years have witnessed a great deal of justifiable concern about the expansion of soybean cultivation into the Amazon, that still explains only a small percentage of total deforestation," the authors say.

Mr Kaimowitz said yesterday that the rate of Amazonian deforestation could grow in the next few years as Brazil became free of foot and mouth disease.

"Since 2003, the states of Mato Grosso, Rondonia, and Tocantins have been declared FMD-free, and can sell their beef anywhere they want. These changes have increased prices in the Amazon, and hence the incentive to deforest," the authors say.

The report suggests that giant ranching operations linked to European supermarkets were now dominating the beef export market.

"In the 1970s and 1980s, most of the meat from the Amazon was being produced by small ranchers selling to local slaughterhouses. Very large commercial ranchers linked to supermarkets are now targeting the whole of Brazil and the global market," Mr Kaimowitz said.

Two weeks ago President Luis Inacio (Lula) da Silva announced of new measures worth £73m to restrain deforestation in the Amazon, committing the government to better planning, law enforcement, and monitoring of deforestation, and greater support for indigenous territories and community forestry.

"The government's approach goes in the right direction, but unless urgent action is taken, the Brazilian Amazon could lose an additional area the size of Denmark over the next 18 months," Benoit Mertens, another author of the report, said.

Cifor recommends that the Brazilian government should also try to keep ranchers off government land, restrict road projects which open up the forest, and provide economic incentives to maintain land as forest.

[Sir Degrader]

Funny, when I lived in Europe (belgium and france), they kept telling me that the US was bulldozing the Amazon to get the wood and that all my US friends should be ashamed of themselves. Oh the irony...