The Western demand for beef and leather is dictating the current trend in overranching in the Amazon forests of Brazil, thus causing persistent deforestation. So says a three-year survey conducted by Greenpeace. Cattle seems to produce a lot of lucrative products and by-products: meat for fresh and canned food, leather hide for fashion, fat for toothpaste, face creams, and soap, and bone and ligament gelatin for yoghurt and candy thickeners.
The cattle ranching trade is usually done on illegally deforested lands in the Amazon. Greenpeace wants a boycott of produce coming from these companies that practice deforestation for the purpose of cattle ranching. Last year, a similar move was done against illegally grown Brazilian soya, bringing about a moratorium on soya grown on similarly deforested lands.
A Brazilian law stipulates that ‘such farms inside the Amazon region must retain 80% of the original forest within their legal boundary.’ Apparently, the law is not implemented because overranching and deforestation still persist. Evidence can easily be retrieved through technological innovations like the GPS that can produce data and images.
The Amazon deforestation is a showcase of man-made disaster. The region has lost at least one-fifth of its forests since the 1970s. This lost area approximates the size of the state of California. The three top culprits in Amazon deforestation are logging, cattle farming, and soy plantation. Greenpeace has a program to stop deforestation in the Amazon by 2015. It includes ‘financial incentives to promote forest protection; and increased support for agencies to monitor, control, and inspect commercial activities.’ The Brazilian government has not supported all these proposals.
Via guardian.co.uk
