Brazil's Beef & Leather Giants Unite Against Amazon Deforestation
photo: Leo Freitas via flickr
Another good news update in the battle against deforestation in the Amazon: Greenpeace is hailing the announcement by four of the world's largest players in the cattle industry that they have committed to ban purchases of beef produced in newly deforested areas:At an event in Sao Paolo, organized by Greenpeace -- which really started putting pressure on the Brazil meat and leather industry with its Slaughtering the Amazon report back in June -- Marfrig, Bertin, JBS-Friboi and Minerva all committed to steps to ensure that the meat that the sell does not contributed to further deforestation.
In order to ensure compliance with these standards, the companies will establish monitoring of their entire supply chains, as well as register farms that both directly and indirectly supply cattle. Additionally, cattle will no longer be purchase from indigenous and protected areas, as well as from operations using slave labor. (Yes, slave labor...)
Enforcement & Accountability Make or Break ThisGreenpeace is calling this a major step forward in climate protection, but let's just remember that this latest event is really the culmination of similar announcements by several of these companies which have taken place in the past few weeks.
Not to mention that the devil's in the details here: To ensure that these proposed monitoring schemes do what they pledge to do, continued pressure for transparency and accountability needs to happen.
Deforestation Global Shoe Brands May Be Unwittingly Causing Deforestation in the AmazonBrazil Development Bank to Require Tagging to Stop Deforestation BeefWorld's Largest Meat Exporter Says No More Amazon Deforestation Beef
