Will the Entire Amazon Rainforest Be Destroyed Because of Meat?
New evidence apparently links JBS S.A. (the world’s largest slaughter company) to illegal deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, as the meat producer attempts to create more space for raising and killing cows for their flesh.
Were you incensed enough to ditch meat last year during the fires in the Brazilian Amazon and neighboring Bolivia, after it was revealed that some cattle ranchers in the Amazon deliberately start illegal wildfires in order to make room for more animals? Or after a PETA video exposé revealed that at several cattle ranches in Brazil supplying JBS S.A., gentle cows and bulls were branded on the face, electroshocked, and beaten before finally being slaughtered? If not, now is the time to act. According to The Guardian, newly uncovered photographs appear to show a JBS S.A. truck driver transporting cattle from an illegally deforested Amazon ranch to a “clean” one that then sold cattle to JBS S.A. The truck driver reportedly took the photographs. This new revelation comes after the company has claimed for years that it’s a challenge to ensure its suppliers aren’t engaging in deforestation—but cattle being transported in a JBS S.A. truck from an apparently prohibited farm seems to show direct complicity in environmental devastation.
The Amazon rainforest versus an appetite for cow flesh—one or the other will go, and our choices will directly influence which survives.
This new evidence is just the latest confirmation that the meat industry kills far more than just its obvious victims. The Amazon rainforest continues to shrink, but it doesn’t have to—if we reduce the demand for meat, we diminish the need for companies to supply it. JBS S.A. already sees the writing on the wall: In Brazil, the company is launching a sustainable vegan burger line. Fellow slaughter companies like Smithfield Foods and Maple Leaf Foods are embracing their vegan sides, too.
So opt for plant-based Pure Farmland products over pig flesh and Lightlife and Field Roast products over Maple Leaf’s dead carcasses. Be a part of the change that saves the Amazon, not destroys it:
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