Print

Mail

wiki links

Big European beef market decimates Brazil's rainforests

Europe's demand for beef made last year one of the worst years ever for Amazonian deforestation, according to a report that quotes Brazilian government figures due to be released.

Last year, satellite pictures showed that almost 26,000km2 of the world's largest continuous forest was lost, a 40 percent increase on the 2002 figure.

And this year's loss could be greater, said the internationally funded Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

The destruction is being driven by escalating European demand for beef amid fears of mad cow disease and foot and mouth disease (FMD) in local herds, Thursday's CIFOR report said.

EU countries now take almost 40 percent of Brazil's 578,000 tonnes of exported beef, the report said. Egypt, Russia and Saudi Arabia between them import 35 percent.

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

"The deforestation is being fueled 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 logging contributed only indirectly to deforestation.

The Amazon's cattle population more than doubled to 57 million between 1990 and 2002, the report said.

"[In that time] the percentage of Europe's processed meat imports that came from Brazil rose from 40 percent to 74 percent. Markets in Russia and the Middle East are also responsible for much of this new demand for Brazilian beef," it said.

But the report plays down US claims that GM-free soya farming for the European market was fueling 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 wrote.

Kaimowitz yesterday warned that the rate of Amazonian deforestation could escalate in the next few years as Brazil becomes entirely free of FMD.

"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 said.

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

CIFOR recommends that the Brazilian government try to keep ranchers off government land, restrict road projects that open up the forest and provide economic incentives to maintain land as forest.
This story has been viewed 2275 times.