Food Companies Must Save the Amazon Soy Moratorium
The call from Mighty Earth comes after traders abandoned the Amazon Soy Moratorium, setting the stage for new wave of deforestation.
The world’s biggest soy companies are deserting one of the world’s greatest conservation successes, their Brazilian trade association, ABIOVE, has announced.
Under the Amazon Soy Moratorium, companies like Cargill, Bunge, and ADM ceased purchasing from suppliers which destroyed the rainforest. It protected an estimated 17,000 square kilometers of Amazon in its first decade. Meanwhile, by focusing expansion on degraded lands instead of intact ecosystems, it has allowed continued expansion of the soy industry.
Commenting on ABIOVE’s announcement, Glenn Hurowitz, CEO of Mighty Earth, said:
“The meat and soy industry is unleashing a wave of deforestation on the Amazon rainforest by sabotaging its own success. Companies like McDonald’s, Carrefour, Tesco and Sainsbury’s that rely on the Amazon Soy Moratorium need to fight for it.”
“So far, too many companies have happily issued statements expressing support for the Amazon Soy Moratorium and their love of Mother Nature but have not been willing to exact sufficient commercial consequences to protect it. That means cutting off suppliers abandoning the ASM.”
“The Soy Moratorium has underpinned many of Brazil’s anti-deforestation successes. If the CEOs of McDonald’s, Ahold Delhaize and Burger King want their legacy to be something other than capitulation to the destroyers of nature, they need to actually do something.”
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Carole Mitchell, Global Director of Communications
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Notes to Editors
- A preliminary study by IPAM indicates that ending the moratorium could increase deforestation in the Amazon biome by up to 30% by 2045, with a direct impact on Brazil’s climate targets (NDC) and deforestation targets.
- Mighty Earth’s Rapid Response report on soy-driven deforestation, November 2025 revealed that from 2008 to 2023, the soy cultivated area in the Amazon has a yearly increase equivalent to more than three times the size of` Los Angeles. Within the time frame of the analysis, soy expansion happened more than three times faster in the last three years than in the previous 12 years, representing a 210% increase.
- The UK Soy Manifesto, the Retail Soy Group in the UK, the French Soy Manifesto, and companies, including the second largest UK supermarket, Sainsburys, the biggest retailer in France E.Leclerc, and other European retailers and food companies – Groupement Mousquetaires, Metro, Casino, Herta, Aoste, Groupe Popy, Alsace Lait, and LSDH – have pledged strong support for ASM and upholding the 2008 cutoff date.
- Mighty Earth urges supermarkets to use their purchasing power on soy to send a very strong message to the traders that this is unacceptable. The impact of the ASM collapsing would drive more deforestation, unlocking over a million hectares of rainforest for soy plantations and fuelling climate pollution.
About Mighty Earth
Mighty Earth is a global advocacy organization working to defend a living planet. Our goal is to protect Nature and secure a climate that allows life to flourish. We are obsessed with impact, and our team has achieved transformative change by persuading leading industries to dramatically reduce deforestation and climate pollution throughout their global supply chains in palm oil, rubber, cocoa, and animal feed, while improving livelihoods for Indigenous and local communities across the tropics.
