Nearly a third of Hong Kong’s beef comes from suppliers linked to deforested areas of Amazon rainforest, Greenpeace study shows
- Environmental group calls on supermarkets to stop selling beef from Brazilian meat-packers they say buy indirectly from ranches that have razed forest
- Hong Kong and mainland China are two top markets for beef from Brazil, where pace of deforestation has quickened under President Jair Bolsonaro
Hong Kong’s supermarkets and businesses should stop selling imported beef from Brazilian ranches located in deforested areas of the Amazon rainforest, an environmental NGO has said after finding meat produced by companies linked to such sources being sold in the city.
A Greenpeace survey in August found imported frozen beef from Marfrig, JBS and Minerva Foods, three meat-packers that account for nearly half of the cattle slaughtered in Brazil’s Amazon areas, being sold in at least one major supermarket chain in Hong Kong. JBS is the largest meat-processing company in the world.
“Some of the supply chains are like ‘beef laundering’. The smaller ranchers that farm on destroyed Amazon forest land sell to other ranchers, who then sell to larger farms, before it ends up with consumers,” said Frances Yeung Hoi-shan, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace.
“This means beef from ranches on destroyed forest land is mixed in with beef from other farms that are not on deforested areas,” she said, meaning it was hard to guarantee repackaged meat at other supermarkets did not come from unethical producers that burn down forests to clear land for farming.
Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of beef, and Hong Kong and mainland China are its top two destinations, according to the US Department of Agriculture.