Slaughtering the Amazon - Cattle ranching is the primary driver of forest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon, with 79.5 percent of deforested land used for cattle pastures.
Just two weeks after our exposé 'Slaughtering the Amazon' showed how the Brazilian cattle industry is decimating the Amazon rainforest, companies and the World Bank are already beginning to sever their links with the slaughterhouses and farms involved.
Last week news emerged that the World Bank has cancelled its loan to Brazilian cattle giant, Bertin. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank, withdrew a USD 90 million loan to the company - money which was intended to fund further expansion into the Amazon region, leading to more rainforest destruction and fuelling global climate change.
Of that 90 million, 30 million will not be paid at all, and it is anticipated that the IFC will ask for the 60 million it has already invested to be returned earlier than previously agreed.
"It is good news that the World Bank is withdrawing these funds, yet scandalous that it was feeding a company that causes Amazon deforestation and climate change in the first place," said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace Brazil’s Amazon campaign director. "For a bank that portrays itself as the 'knowledge bank', this was a very ill-conceived and thoroughly destructive use of its resources. It must now guarantee that it will not invest in such damaging projects in the future."
So what about other companies involved?
Brazilian retailers have also reacted to our investigation. The three biggest supermarket chains in Brazil - Carrefour, Wal-Mart and Pão de Açúcar – said they will suspend all trade in cattle products from farms involved in deforestation in a key area of the Amazon. But we have yet to see such a positive reaction from the big brands in the US and Europe, which were also implicated in our report - among them, Nike, Adidas, Clarks and Geox and several well-known supermarkets.
