Livestock farming in Brazil is responsible for deforestation in the Amazon on a staggering scale: 800 million trees felled in six years.
An investigation published by the Guardian reveals systematic and widespread deforestation in the Amazon linked to beef production in Brazil. Over six years – between 2017 and 2022 – an estimated 800 million trees (1.7 million hectares) were felled in the rainforest in the vicinity of around twenty facilities owned by three major meat producers and exporters: Jbs, Marfrig and Minerva.
The investigation, carried out with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (Tbij) and Repórter Brasil, forms part of the Bruno e Dom project by Forbidden Stories, which continues the work of Bruno Pereira, an expert on indigenous peoples, and Dom Phillips, a journalist who worked closely with the Guardian and was killed in the Amazon last year.
To arrive at this staggering figure, satellite imagery was used, livestock movements were tracked to identify the farms most likely to be supplying each slaughterhouse based on the areas from which animals were purchased, and interviews were conducted with plant workers. The investigation focused on the states of Mato Grosso and Pará and Rondônia, but the deforestation figures could be even higher as the producing companies also own facilities in other parts of the Amazon.
Meat produced in Brazil is exported worldwide, with the largest quantities destined for China. Among the buyers of deforestation-linked meat identified in the investigation are Nestlé and the German meat company Tönnies, which had supplied Lidl and Aldi (supermarket chains that declared they had stopped selling Brazilian beef in 2021 and 2022 respectively), as well as dozens of wholesale buyers in various European countries, some of whom supply catering operations serving schools and hospitals.
In one particular case reported in the investigation, more than 2,000 hectares of forest are said to have been destroyed between 2018 and 2021 at the São Pedro do Guaporé farm in Pontes e Lacerda, in the state of Mato Grosso, which sold nearly 500 head of cattle to Jbs. For its part, Jbs stated that it had blocked purchases from the farm once the irregularities were identified.
According to the meat-producing companies, which claim to apply rigorous compliance procedures in pursuit of sustainability targets, monitoring the origin of livestock is difficult above all because of the widespread practice of "cattle laundering", which involves transporting animals from a farm responsible for deforestation to a "clean" farm – one where no irregularities have ever been found – before they are sent to slaughter, thereby masking their origin.
Livestock farming was the primary driver of the sharp increase in deforestation between 2019 and 2021 during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro; hopes are now pinned on the work of the new president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to put a stop to the destruction. It is also hoped that measures such as the recently adopted European Union anti-deforestation law will help to tackle the phenomenon. The Amazonian rainforest is of fundamental importance in the fight against the climate crisis, and the loss of trees in this region has consequences for the entire planet.