Can European Pressure Stop the Creep of Soy Fields into Brazil's Rainforests?

By Andrew Downie
Photographs by Alex Webb/Magnum Photos

Today, in our fast food nation, in a culture of Super Size Me, in a place where obesity is ever more a national concern, everyone has a pretty good idea what they are eating when they go to McDonald’s. A Big Mac: 540 calories and 29 grams of fat. Chicken McNuggets: 420 calories and 24 grams of fat. Large fries: 570 calories and 30 grams of fat.

The one question we don’t need to ask today is, Where’s the beef?

But lately, another question has arisen. With deforestation, global warming and climate change the new buzz words on everyone’s lips, more and more people want to know: Where’s the beef from?

Knowing what’s in burgers and fries is no longer enough. Environmentally aware consumers want to know how the beef, chicken or vegetables got to their dinner plates. Consumers now want health and justice.

This is especially true in Western Europe, where environmentally aware shoppers have challenged fast-food outlets, supermarkets and department stores for selling  beef, wood and other products that are hastening problems like climate change and deforestation. In particular, European concerns have turned to a new and growing environmental threat: soybeans.

Fast-food outlets throughout Europe, including  McDonald’s, rely heavily on Brazilian soybeans, which are increasingly harvested from fields that used to be Amazon rainforest. The European Union bought 10 million tons of soy from Brazil in 2006 — about 40 percent of Brazil’s soy export crop — soy that is used as animal feed to fatten the cows and chickens that become Big Macs and McNuggets. (Nearly 80 percent of the global soybean harvest is milled into animal feed, according to the Worldwatch Institute.)

Europe’s culpability in the Amazonian soy harvest is a  fact that sticks in the throat of consumers who are no longer prepared to buy from companies they suspect are complicit in illegal logging, deforestation, and growing or buying genetically modified (GM) crops.

“Consumers don’t just look to see if it is a high-quality product but also [ask,] ‘Where does it come from,’ says Karen Van Bergen, vice president of corporate relations for McDonald’s Europe. “Traceability is important. They won’t buy GM foods, and consumers tell us they don’t want to contribute to cutting down the rainforest. It’s ‘If I buy your product, what kind of company am I dealing with?’”

A decade ago, when consumers caused a furor over deforestation, McDonald’s stopped buying beef from ranches carved out of the Amazon. So the company’s executives were dismayed last year when Greenpeace showed them the results of a two-year investigation documenting that deforested land in the Amazon was being used to grow soy imported to Europe.

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Nature picture credits: All Photos © Alex Webb/Magnum Photos