A report by environmental and human rights NGOs on Tuesday linked three major meatpacking companies to illegal deforestation in Brazil, where farmers are accused of spraying herbicides from the sky to clear vast tracts of land.
Farmers used 2,4-D — a herbicide found in “Agent Orange,” used infamously in the Vietnam War — to clear 81,200 hectares of the Pantanal wetland, a UNESCO World Heritage site, Mighty Earth’s report said , Reporter. Brazil and AidEnvironment.
Using “chemical deforestation”, they cleared an area four times the size of Amsterdam to raise cattle in a biodiversity sanctuary, he added.
The report accuses meat packers JBS, Marfrig and Minerva of doing business with farmers involved in illegal practices.
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In turn, they supply beef products to retailers including Carrefour, Casino/GPA, Grupo Mateus and Sendas/Assai, he added.
“The deliberate killing of countless trees and wildlife in the Pantanal by aerial spraying of a highly toxic compound ‘Agent Orange’ is a devastating new war on nature waged by the beef industry,” said Mighty Earth Brazil director Joao Goncalves.
In addition to killing plant life, chemicals can contaminate water and endanger fish, livestock, and even humans.
Vietnam blames Agent Orange, which US forces sprayed to destroy land cover and food sources in their war with North Vietnamese troops from 1962 to 1971, for causing severe birth defects in 150,000 children.
A farmer involved in the Pantanal’s “chemical deforestation” campaign has been charged with several environmental crimes and fined more than $520 million.
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“The experience cannot stand”
From 2009 to 2023 overall, the report said JBS slaughterhouses are linked to nearly 470,000 hectares of deforestation and land-use conversion in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado tropical savanna.
“Including the Marfrig and Minerva Foods slaughterhouses, the total area destroyed during this period exceeds 550,000 hectares. Of this total, 55 percent is in the Cerrado biome and 45 percent in the Amazon,” it said.
The NGO’s report was published as the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland, battles devastating fires that have, among other things, injured several jaguars — listed as “near threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.
Authorities said many of the fires were set intentionally, often to clear land for farming.
“The biome cannot withstand fire and rampant chemical deforestation,” Goncalves said.
“The big beef companies must urgently suspend all cattle farmers who turn to this destruction of nature for profit.”
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JBS in a response included in the report said the cases reported had not appeared in a database or alert system it uses for monitoring.
The company added in a note to AFP that its policies “do not tolerate illegal deforestation”.
Marfrig said that at the time it received cattle from a ranch named in the report, the supplier had “met all socio-environmental criteria”.
Minerva said she had no business with the same farm.
Carrefour, for its part, said that “none of the five farms listed is (a) supplier to the Carrefour Brazil group.”
Source: AFP