Chickens sold in Tesco have been linked to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in an investigation by an environmental campaign group.
In their latest report “Tesco: A basket of problems”, the campaign group Mighty Earth linked chicken and pork products with illegal fires and the deforestation of 400 hectares of Brazilian rainforest, after looking at satellite images of the Santa Ana farm in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil.
The campaign group said this was the equivalent of more than “560 Wembley football pitches”, and the loss of “more than 220,000 trees”.
Mighty Earth worked with teams at Repórter Brasil and Ecostorm to carry out the project – including field investigations, satellite images and interviews – mapping out Tesco’s full soy supply chain.
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The investigation found links between the farm and US agricultural giant Cargill, and chicken and pork on the shelves of the Big 4 retailer.
“Our investigation shows Tesco is a basket of problems for the Amazon. While the UK’s top retailer reaps massive profits, it continues to do business with known forest destroyers such as Cargill, adding fuel to the fire of deforestation,” said Mighty Earth UK Director Gemma Hoskins.
“Business as usual isn’t an option if we want to tackle the climate emergency. Tesco should only source from companies that don’t put the Amazon and other precious biomes at risk,” she continued.
“We take any accusation of deforestation and conversion occurring anywhere in our supply chain extremely seriously and we immediately asked Cargill for clarification on the matter and to remove the identified farm from their supply chain until a full investigation can be carried out,” Tesco told The Times newspaper.
In October 2022 another investigation by Repórter Brasil and Ecostorm also highlighted links between corn and soya grown on deforested land and Brazillian multinational JBS (one of the world’s biggest poultry suppliers).
According to the World Worldlife Fund 80% of the world’s soya is grown in Brazil, Argentina and the United States – production has increased by almost 15 times since the 1950’s and almost 80% of it is used to feed livestock.
