European Supermarkets fail to act on deforestation-linked soy
Major European supermarkets Tesco, Carrefour, Asda, Lidl and Sainsbury’s have been urged to drop key global soy companies after an investigation by Mighty Earth found over 27,000 hectares of deforestation on soy farms in the threatened Cerrado savannah in Brazil.
Less well known than the Amazon rainforest, Brazil’s tropical Cerrado is the world’s most biodiverse savannah and wooded grassland and it has become a global hotspot for soy and cattle-driven deforestation. Most of the soy-driven deforestation observed was used to produce soy animal feed. Meat is the world’s largest driver of deforestation, wildlife extinction, and displacement of Indigenous peoples.
Eleven members of the Retail Soy Group – Ahold Delhaize, Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Lidl, M&S, Migros, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose and Woolworths – and other retailers such as Carrefour with similar corporate policies promising to ban deforestation-risk soy after a 2020 cut-off date have been urged to investigate Mighty Earth’s findings and to immediately drop key soy traders linked to this new deforestation in the Cerrado.
Based on satellite imagery analysis, Mighty Earth’s new report Promises, Promises! found five major global soy traders Bunge, Cargill, COFCO, LDC and ALZ Grãos continued to buy soy from Brazilian suppliers and conglomerates who had cleared and deforested at least 27,000 hectares on ten farms in the Cerrado since after August 2020 cut-off. This is an area larger than the city of Edinburgh in Scotland, or half the size of Chicago.
“Major supermarkets like Tesco, Carrefour, Asda and Lidl should urgently investigate and then ban any soy company with proven links to deforestation,” said Alex Wijeratna, Senior Director at Mighty Earth
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