Much of Brazil’s Beef Defies Zero-Deforestation Agreements
Brazilian meatpackers continue to procure cattle from inside the country’s protected areas more than a decade after zero-deforestation cattle agreements were signed to reform the sector. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in the journal Conservation Letters.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Vrije University Amsterdam found that from 2013 to 2018, millions of cattle slaughtered for beef spent at least part of their lives grazing in protected areas of the Brazilian Amazon, including on indigenous lands.
The study found nearly 1.1 million cattle were sold directly from private properties inside protected areas to slaughterhouses in Mato Grosso, Pará, and Rondônia states. An additional 2.2 million head were linked via indirect suppliers located in protected areas. Researchers found 72% of that 3.3 million slaughtered head originated from sustainable-use areas, where ranching may be permitted in certain cases. However, the study found 20% of production also occurred in strictly protected areas and 8% on indigenous lands where commercial grazing is illegal and prohibited by the cattle agreements.
Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of beef and officials note that controlling commercial cattle production inside the protected areas is crucial to ensure Brazil’s access to foreign markets and protect biodiversity in the amazon rainforest.
“Protected areas are the cornerstone of Brazil’s conservation efforts and are arguably the most effective way that we have to conserve forests and the biodiversity inside of them,” says Holly Gibbs, a UW–Madison professor of geography and senior author of the study. “That meatpackers are continuing to buy from properties in areas that are under strict protection is alarming.”
Ranchers and slaughterhouses in Brazil are required to share information about where animals are transported, primarily for the purpose of monitoring their health. When coupled with property records, this information is also useful for identifying where cattle have grazed, including if they grazed inside protected areas.
Gibbs and her colleagues were able to track beef supplies by tying animal movement data to property records that they then cross-referenced with maps of protected areas in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia. Expansion of agriculture in those three states is accelerating deforestation at an alarming rate, researchers said. Historically, cattle ranching has been linked to about 80% of deforestation in the Amazon basin.
The study’s authors said their analysis ends in 2018 because the Brazilian government ended its previously transparent public recordkeeping. Meanwhile, satellite imagery analyzed by the Brazilian space agency indicates that deforestation rates increased by nearly 50% from 2018 to 2020, with nearly three-quarters of the loss occurring in the states covered in this study.
By ending its transparent accounting of cattle movement data, the Brazilian federal government also hampers meatpackers’ efforts to monitor their indirect suppliers.
“Many slaughterhouses have gotten the message that being associated with deforestation is bad for their business, but they cannot address this issue without increased availability of information about their suppliers,” says Lisa Rausch, a co-author of the paper and scientist at UW–Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
“There is an appetite among retailers and investors — the parts of the value chain that slaughterhouses are responsive to — for more information about slaughterhouses’ performances, but right now that information is lacking,” Rausch says.
