Brazil is the biggest exporter of beef in the world, and more than 40% of its vast 240m-cattle herd is raised in the Amazon region. As a result, swathes of the nature-rich rainforest are being cleared and burned to create pasture.
This is pushing Amazon destruction close to a point of no return, prompting environmentalists and consumer groups to demand deforestation-free meat products. Governments, meat suppliers and retailers have promised to clean up their act, but one of the biggest hurdles is a complex and obscure supply chain that can hide the origins of meat products.
From birth to slaughter, most of the cattle raised in the Amazon are moved around multiple farms. Before sale to big meatpacking companies such as JBS (the world leader), they may spend up to 75% of their lives on indirect supplying ranches. This system creates loopholes and blind spots in oversight, which allow “cattle laundering”, as it is known, where cattle from illegal or deforestation-linked farms are mixed into the supply chain. Farms that have been linked to deforestation may be embargoed by the Brazilian environment agency IBAMA.
Global consumers of Brazilian beef cannot know for sure whether their burgers and steaks caused destruction of the rainforest until there is a way to track the entire supply chain, which can be understood as follows:
