Amazon fires and Brazilian beef: how Hong Kong’s massive appetite for the meat is driving rainforest’s doom

Hong Kong is the world’s biggest importer of Brazilian beef, an appetite that is playing a significant role in deforestation of the Amazon rainforest

The city’s residents are among the biggest meat eaters in the world, each consuming the equivalent of two 10-ounce pieces of steak a day

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Cattle standing in the midst of smoke from Amazon fires in early September. Hong Kong consumers, with their huge appetite for Brazilian beef, are a significant driver of such fires used for land clearing. Photo: AP

Published: 7:00pm, 25 Sep 2019Updated: 8:32pm, 26 Sep 2019

Shelves stacked with beef from Brazil fill refrigerators at a supermarket in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay shopping district. There’s a lot of it – and it’s cheap. A pack weighing 0.86 pounds (14 ounces) costs just HK$45.90 (US$5.90) compared with HK$80.90 for beef from Australia weighing 0.2 pounds less.

“I buy Brazilian beef at least a couple of times a week,” says shopper and mother-of-two Cheryl Lam. “It’s a cheap source of protein for my family.”

Hong Kong is the world’s largest market for Brazilian beef in terms of volume, importing a staggering 395,000 tonnes last year worth US$1.44 billion, according to the Brazilian Beef Exporters Association. China was second, importing 322,000 tonnes. Hong Kong and China combined accounted for 44 per cent of all Brazilian beef exports by volume. Notably, China’s imports rose over 50 per cent last year compared with 2017.

But while its low price makes Brazilian beef a popular choice for consumers, many are unaware of the high environmental cost: buying beef from Brazil is contributing to deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

Protesters in Berlin, Germany, on September 20 during the Fridays for Future movement. Photo: Reuters

As demand for Brazilian beef surges to record levels, ranchers are illegally burning and clearing the rainforest to make space for cattle to graze.

According to the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, animal agriculture is the largest cause of deforestation in the Amazon, responsible for about 80 per cent of current rates.