UK supermarkets and retailers have come under fire for continuing relationships with soya traders who buy from suppliers contributing to deforestation in Brazil.
According to the campaign group Mighty Earth, suppliers that have sold to leading soya traders have deforested at least 27,000 hectares (67,000 acres) in 10 farms in the Cerrado region in Brazil since August 2020.
Some of the traders supply the UK, meaning soya harvested is likely to end up in meat supply chains for major supermarkets and retailers through animal feed.
READ MORE: Soya campaign launched to stop chicken farmers using toxic pesticides
Campaigners claim that 77% of the world’s soya beans are used for feeding animals including pigs and poultry. However, in 2006 the Amazon Soya Moratorium has banned the sale of soya grown on Amazon land deforested after July 2008.
“Supermarkets should … set up effective, fully transparent and cross-ecosystem soy monitoring and traceability systems for the Cerrado, Brazil and beyond,” Mighty Earth’s report said.
“Although this analysis focuses primarily on the Cerrado savannah, a series of other reports show that the supermarkets also face a significant risk of links to the destruction of native habitat in other ecosystems that supply animal feed, including Brazil’s Pantanal, the Bolivian Amazon basin and Chiquitania, Paraguay’s Atlantic forest, and the Gran Chaco of Argentina and Paraguay.”
On top of this, campaigners from Mighty Earth have also asked supermarkets to call on their meat suppliers to “work towards a goal of selling at least 20% plant-based or alternative proteins” by 2030.
A Retail Soy Group spokesperson added: “Mighty Earth’s report provides an additional reference point for understanding the progress companies are taking to transform their supply chains as part of new monitoring, reporting and verification systems that are being established through delivery partnerships in which companies made deforestation and land conversion commitments, like the UK Soy Manifesto and CGF Forest Positive Coalition,”
Click here to sign up to Grocery Gazette’s free daily email newsletter
