Tracking Illicit Brazilian Beef from the Amazon to Your Burger
e360.yale.edu
e360.yale.edu
One of the things I find most disconcerting as an adult is the disconnect with the food I eat. Even the local 'farmer butcher' - I don't actually know if the meat they sell me is what they say it is.
I buy a lot of deer from a friend of a friend as it feels slightly more known to me - even if I have no idea about what the deer actually ate in it's life.
Shoving 100 cattle into a 1 acre feed lot for their entire lives is unfortunately how a lot of beef is produced. They spend their lives covered in shit, sleeping in shit, and trapped with no where to roam.
And instead of addressing this problem, my state (Idaho) made it illegal to take photos of the issue. [1]
[1] https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/title18/t...
Nobody does that, it’d be way too expensive. People here on HN have absolutely zero knowledge of how industrial cattle farming operates and have some really bizarre beliefs about the process. Largely because their only experience with it is the supermarket meat section and passing those massive stinky feedlots along the CA I5.
For everyone else: After a calf is raised and weaned from their mother, they are sent to “background” on pasture and the last few months a cow spends packed in a feedlot is just to fatten it up for human consumption. These are usually steps done by different companies altogether. The whole point of beef is utilizing marginal land that can’t grow human food. It converts tons of grassland to usable farmland, and that pasture makes up 2/3 of the total agricultural land in the US.
>"The whole point of beef is utilizing marginal land that can’t grow human food."
FYI: 36% of corn is grown just to feed cattle/livestock. I'm trying to breed chickens that are less dependent on commercial foods, so I'm somewhat familiar with the topic.
Also if anybody is interested in reading about how cattle are raised just read the USDA's page on it: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/...
It's a cheap type of corn [1] only grown on marginal farmland that is one step above pasture land.
>> typically only spend about 2-3 months there after having very happy lives as calves on a ranch.
> After a calf is raised and weaned from their mother, they are sent to “background” on pasture and the last few months a cow spends packed in a feedlot is just to fatten it up for human consumption.
The only difference is the introduction of "sent to “background” on pasture" which arguably is not different from "happy lives as calves on a ranch" given different interpretations of calf to distinguish between baby and adolescent cattle.
I wonder how much it costs to buy a legislature house. Can't we crowfund buying it to make "modern" farming illegal?
Many western states have much stricter views on property rights and trespassing than the coasts. The penalties are generally higher even if not dealing with this specific scenario. Even regular ID trespassing law can carry 6mo-1y jail time depending on the circumstances, etc.
One often overlooked thing that isn't particularly applicable in this case is the biosecurity aspect involved in agricultural trespassing. Even trespassing in agricultural areas without taking pictures can carry higher penalties in many states.
The penalties in these laws are higher than just generic secret recording.
Do you have the law that prevents the recording in UT? I only see the tresspassing law. Which by the way, would appear to be a class B misdemeanor if it was agricultural land or if it was a building (same for both your examples).
I wasn't trying to distinguish between land and building, mostly just that they are about recording and specifically animal operations.
I'm almost certain Utah is not the only state that specifically has laws around recording and specifically for animal operations that go beyond just generic trespass, but I don't have time right now to dive in.
Do they, or are they concurrent stemming from the same act in UT?
"not all agricultural recording would fall under trespass"
True. Your example was breaking into a Beyond Meat plant, comparing trespass to interference. In that case, the penalties are similar.
A lesser included offense is an offense which itself constitutes one element of another offense. Under the doctrine of multiplicity, you may either be tried for the lesser included or the offense for which the lesser included is an element — but not both. To be charged with both would run afoul of the constitutional provisions limiting double jeopardy.
This is not part of any Utah statute, it’s a general constitutional principle under US law.
Why you made me say this twice, I do not know.
You could have been constructive and said that criminal trespass was a lesser included offense under section 2d. Or should I just reply to you using a few semirandom words? Relevant search terms include: conversation, context, sentences, convey complete ideas
Honestly, if you just Google the search terms it’s easier for both of us because you can tailor your search to your level of understanding.
If it's too much work for you to engage in a thoughful conversation (per the guidelines), just don't engage at all next time. We don't need low effort "search terms..." comments on here.
You're saying that there wouldn't be penalties for breaking and entering?
also linked in other comment
Beef is incredibly expensive in terms of costs of food, land, and water -- and in high density situations - rapid disease spread (and post consumption disease spread via cancer, metabolic, and heart disease)
By promoting sustainable diets, mostly vegetarian with optional beef splurges
- food costs decrease
- food transport costs decrease
- disease caused by diets decrease
> but I think it's important our legislation focuses entirely on improving the life of people, exclusively
What about the activists who are motivated by a genuine belief that this is wrong and believe it's their life's work to raise awareness of the issue? Throwing them in jail isn't improving their lives - what framework are you using to pick losers & winners of the people you help vs hurt?
Seems to be the combined wishes of the constituents. Same theory applies to most topics. You can see this in how different states poll on firearms (or abortion, etc) and the types of laws they have on that topic. As an extreme example, the same person can carry the same gun in two different states and be lawful in one and committing a felony in another without causing any damage simply because the values and beliefs expressed by the populations results in different laws. They might even qualify to carry lawfully in both states but are missing a piece of paper confirming it. That's how the laws works - break it and suffer consequences. Maybe it's worth it depeding on your moral convictions. Don't like it, then change the law. In the case of agricultural tresspass, the law is not likely to change in ID based on the current views of the population there.
More importantly, we have ideals and principles that supersede the will of the public. Arguably the most sacred ideal in America is the First Amendment with respect to protections about speech & this is pretty adjacent in that the law is criminalizing speech for something that should arguably be a civil matter at best. Laws like this are not dissimilar to passing a law protecting employers from employees trying to document unsafe working conditions.
So the idea that the law is purely an expression of the wishes of the constituents is nice but not borne out in the structure of modern democratic governments, not borne out in practice because of how power & money intermix, & invalidated by the idea that we have principles that supersede the wishes of those constituents.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
That's why I mentioned polling and gave generally verifiable examples.
Yes, money can sway the legislature or even the views of constituents. And yes, most topics have a large number of people who don't care because they don't know or the topic doesn't affect them. However, polling and other research can show how the population views the topic pertaining to the law and the culture in general.
"criminalizing speech for something that should arguably be a civil matter at best."
This is factually incorrect. The speech portion of this would be the sharing of the picture. The part that is criminalized is trespassing and recording to get that picture. The civil part would be stuff like libel or slander.
"So the idea that the law is purely an expression of the wishes of the constituents is nice but not borne out in the structure of modern democratic governments"
I never said it was a pure expression. You can clearly see that property rights are a part of the culture of most western states. Yes, those laws were influenced by the wealthy over generations, but it's now become part of the culture.
This kind of corp-captured government is one more reason I'm certain we're in the 1910s again.
I'm finding it easier to count the exceptions to that. (they had appropriate housing, we have fewer labor-related deaths).
source: am an annoying genealogist
> (c) Obtains employment with an agricultural production facility by force, threat, or misrepresentation with the intent to cause economic or other injury to the facility’s operations, livestock, crops, owners, personnel, equipment, buildings, premises, business interests or customers;
Likewise these "secrets" aren't something valuable like an algorithm that's in the interest of society to protect. The secret is their monstrous and unethical practices which lower their sales when their prospective consumers learn about them. Keeping it secret doesn't protect competition, it just hides something from consumers that would allow them to make a more informed choice.
Muckraker journalism like this is one of the main reasons the US has regulations for things like food safety and working conditions. Should a journalist go to jail for revealing that a slaughterhouse is hiring 8 year olds, or that there is a mass contamination of a food product that the company still intends to sell? Those can be "secrets" too.
We're seeing with Boeing what happens when law-breaking is swept under the rug for too long.
Not saying there aren't weird laws. Check the notions of boxed squares (miles) and airspace. Some of these need addressing at the federal level.
And then being shoved into a truck, shipped who knows how many thousand miles to a butchering facility that does it for 3c cheaper and then end up in a line with all your peers to be killed in a horribly industrialized way.
When I lived in central Europe there was a story about pigs or cows, I don't remember, being shipped to Morocco for butchering, imagine that!
People would be vegetarians in a heartbeat if they saw how meat is produced.
> And instead of addressing this problem, my state (Idaho) made it illegal to take photos of the issue. [1]
Same in Canada. Very disappointing.
No, because most people wouldn't care.
However, cattle do not spend their "entire lives" at a feedlot. Usually only the last few months (or less) before slaughter. Prior to that, that majority of cattle live in very open and pleasant conditions.
This isn't a special deal either, this is how the guy makes his living, along with some other farm products.
Grass-finished is really tough economically; corn results in an animal almost 3x the size.
The only grass-finished place I have is struggling no matter how much beef I eat :) I really need other places if it goes away.
1) equivocating hunting with breathing? One is necessary for life, the other is done by less than a quarter of people, and for most of them it’s just a hobby.
2) slavery has also been done probably since humanity began millions of years ago, so that clearly is not sufficient for something shoulding be legal.
There's a lot of people who never drink water, but drinking water is still essential and shouldn't be outlawed.
All the behaviours that we have in common with other mammals are natural and eternal. They can never be legislated away, even though many have tried and they have died. Including kings trying to ban hunting certain game for commoners and having them for themselves.
We outlaw all sorts of things that can be found in nature.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20630-zoologger-the-f...
>> It is more natural because creatures in nature do it.
> "Creatures in nature" also "farm"
Thus "hunting" is not "more natural" than agriculture and domestication of other species.
If you don't find it interesting that non-human life has been performing behaviors humans think unique to themselves, well that's your problem.
Sustenance hunting yes, but the rules about selling wild meat are to prevent market hunting. There are more humans by weight than any other land animal. If the general population started eating hunted meat, any wild population would be wiped out. So we have careful rules to ensure hunters do not hunt simply to sell the meat.
If the general population started eating hunted meat, vast agricultural areas would be returned to nature, giving a slight offset to that problem.
But jumping back to reality, those people who actually hunt and purchase hunted meat right now are people who care about nature and shepherd it with responsibility. They can safely ignore any hacker that starts yapping about some law written by unnatural people.
I don't think the math works here. There isn't enough agricultural area on the planet to sustainably generate enough hunted Calories for the general population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punt_gun
If I were to use a huge trawler with a big net to catch hundreds of fish I would call that overfishing. But is that even fishing?
Thwres nuance between artisanal and industrial, and both get caught with the same word
Please don't assume that everyone here lives in the same city/state/country/continent as you.
Brazil reached 92 percent renewable energy. So there are good news.
https://www.gmexconsulting.com/cms/brazil-hits-92-renewable-...
What mechanisms were put into action that indicate improvement?
I'm Brazilian, living in Brazil and I don't share your optimism.
I don't object to eating meat, but so much of the industrial meat production world is a nightmare. From disease risk, to abuse of animals, to slash and burn, to waste.
By buying meat from a local farmer, you can eliminate a lot of that. You end up eating less meat, probably, but we buy a whole cow every few years and divvy it up between friends. You could do that more or less often if you still wanted to eat a lot of meat.
Higher quality is debatable, foreign imports are not necessarily "lower quality", I'm a Brazilian so I'm on the other side of the coin, our beef is anything but low quality. The problem that the article wants to expose is that much of it is raised on illegal ranches, more often than not on the deflorested Amazon.
Being local is not something that food chains care about.
Also I understand what the article points out about illegal ranches supplying corporations but Who eats the food from the food chains?
Let's not make assumptions about quality when we don't have enough information from each country to make an educated guess. I will point out that Brazil is the largest exporter of agricultural products in the West, and we comply with very demanding markets, including the US. The problem being cited is not about quality—we are compliant with the FDA—but the ethics of ranging cattle in previously Amazon forests
I am asking a different question than what is demonstrated by the article, intentionally.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-30/mcdonald-...
Nothing has been done to stop it because of a number of cultural problems: 1) Americans love beef: "why would I eat what food eats?" 2) America could stop all conflict around the world, from deforestation to war to civil rights abuses, if that wasn't directly at odds with the appetites of our capitalist empire and 3) scarcity mindset for survival has so dominated the Global South for so long that nature is seen as a resource to be exploited, far below even the dignity of human life, due to unrelenting debt pressure from the IMF to create a wage slave class for harvesting cash crops and labor/resource-intensive commodities like beef.
That's nonsense. China and Russia are exploiting development countries as best they can (too). I wonder how you got the idea that it'd be only the US?
Websearch for "china cobalt mines congo" for example.
Interesting about McDonald's anyway
Even stereotypical food snobs like the French https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/19/the-french-have-fallen-in-lo...
The world would be much better if fast food were a US-only phenomenon but that's trivially untrue.
Our property was farmland for 150 years before it basically ran out of nutrients in the 1970s. After one year of a pretty good harvest (not great) in 2019, we couldn't grow anything. One home testing kit later, and we found that there were virtually no minerals in the soil.
Fast forward five years and between heavy composting and generating a very healthy amount of bird waste, we're just starting to restore the nutrient balance in the soil. The next step (in progress) is planting some native grasses and low lying shrubs to try and break up the practically impenetrable clay pan that exists below the soil.
Many people dislike meat eating, and I understand that, but developing a healthy relationship with the land practically requires some form of livestock. We are turning "dead" land into highly productive pasture literally in one growing cycle.
We aren't doing anything intensive, and we don't have chickens or pigs. I did the math, and it doesn't really seem like you can have chickens or pigs just range, you have to supplement their diet in some way. Geese on the other hand are like...the best animals for regenerative ag, maybe next to sheep.
We will probably get chickens at some point (unless we miraculously can range enough ducks for eggs), but we will have to buy in their feed.
They'll also ignore any imports into the system from conventional sources. SO, they'll feed conventionally grown feed, but not include that in their numbers.
In the end, even if regenerative farming was any good, the amount of meat we could afford to produce (aka without using too much land, water or other resources) is so tiny that 90% of our food would end up being vegan anyway.
We tend to stop at the symptoms instead of going after the root cause.
Wasting crops feeding cattle is inherently worse than the alternative, feeding directly on the crops and avoiding the wasting of calories when going up one trophic level.
Grain finishing is another matter. But it's not a 1 grain : 1/10th beef type situation.
Now chopping and burning down the amazon to create grazing land for cattle? yeah that's going to probably kill us all.
Like it's obvious the people who own and control that land don't care about it anywhere near as much as you do so if you want them to stop chopping it down essentially you're gonna need to start paying them not to. Just seems naive to think stopping specifically poor people from eating meat is the solution to this.
> Poor people from eating meat
Yeah and a carbon tax will stop poor people from using as much gas, etc. - if we want to solve climate change we cannot just insulate all poor people from externality pricing.
Solving the environmental crisis means reducing our consumption of resources. Solving global poverty means a significant increase in consumption of resources.
So the only way forward is to let the global population decrease ASAP so that we can both live well and preserve the planet.
We are already wreacking havoc on the planet and marginal decrease in resource intensity is not going to make a difference because our total impact needs to be slashed.
I never understand the insistence of some of ignoring population in the equation, which is the key parameter.
We're seeing more than simply marginal decreases - if we can successfully transition our power. The gap in per capita CO2 emissions between developing, middle-income, developed is not nearly as great as what you are suggesting [0] and will decrease even further in the time that it takes to raise people in poverty now to developed-world standards.
> I never understand the insistence of some of ignoring population in the equation, which is the key parameter.
A few reasons: 1. Population is projected to peak in the coming decades. 2. "Slashing" population counts requires a global deployment of force that is both not practically feasible right now and incredibly unpopular. There is no practical path to "slashing" population. This is the primary reason, imo. 3. People in the West always imagine that it would be other people/nations slashing their population count when the biggest marginal impact (especially given climate lags) would be slashing their own population. These solutions are eugenicist in nature.
Also - taking a step back for a moment, I am confused as to how this in any way justifies beef. Beef contributes to the gap between rich and poor in CO2. If we reduce reliance on beef, it means we can support a larger population sustainably?
[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
And so we are screwed.
Now the West is already slashing its own population, birth rates have crashed. The issue is that it's refusing to let it go because it's not the easy option, and at global scale this is a taboo subject.
And so we are doubly screwed.
Don’t understand why people want to play whack a mole to get to the end goal all while making everyone’s lives worse, esp on the lower income levels who can’t afford organic meat.
When if you want the trees saved then pay them to keep them and hold them to it. Like that’s the actual goal no? And easier than completely retooling society as a backwards way to cause that change.
I mean this is about the trees right?
REDD+ programs (which is what you are describing) are massive failures at preventing deforestation or carbon decreases.
> There’s limitless profitable reasons to chop it down.
No, there are costs and profits and if you decrease the profits and increase the costs it changes peoples behavior at the margin. The Amazon rainforest isn't the one thing that is exempt from basic economics.
The world wide land area for farming would reduce from 4 to 1 billion hectares if we didn't use livestock to feed humans. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
So the answer to "what would we do with all that land we can't put crops on" is "whatever we want". For example, we could just leave it be nature, since we don't need it for farming.
How?
I mean, I'm not a fan of destroying forests, etc, but around here, there is no unmanaged land so presumably all the forests were already burnt etc for farmers... But we're all around, right? I don't get how burning the Amazon for food people want will actually kill us.
You are living in a post destruction area, with new forests planted to supplement the destruction that was there before. Most of these forests aren't more than 70 years old, that's about when we finally made an effort to fix how badly we totally fucked up and why people needed clean air to not die from lung cancer (among other things). The loss of biodiversity, air quality, etc. already occurred. You are a survivor. What's more, your survival was in part supported by the air quality of other virgin forests further away from you that weren't yet cut down. But now that they are being cut down, there's less left to support you.
In short, you're asking yourself why you shouldn't shoot yourself in the foot again, because you managed to survive the first shot and it looks to you like it healed just fine (it didn't).
Someone around here did clear the forests for farmland... and people are doing ok.
Its not that everyone died, as the comment I responded to said.
https://woodlandsteward.squarespace.com/storage/past-issues/...
We are still alive. I wish we had the forests, but we have survived and the environment has adjusted.
https://www.wri.org/insights/tracking-global-tree-cover-gain
And, the Amazon is pretty damn big. The potential effects of its loss are detailed here:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-the-amazon...
Finally, tropical forests (/jungles) are a lot more productive in terms of growth (and carbon capture) than temperate forests.
https://news.mongabay.com/2011/06/tropical-forests-more-effe...
To reduce quality of life (because it's not limited to meat, it's comprehensive restrictions) simply to accomodate ever more humans on the planet is madness and unsustainable, anyway.
PS: Let's also remember, for example, that 50-60 million bisons roamed North America before European settlement, whereas there are about 28 million beef cows in the US today (according to Google).
You're not doing a whole lot to explain why there is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. I can think of a whole host of reasons why it is wrong in matters of ethics and mercy. Who is there to advocate for the cow? We know cows feel a gamut of emotions just as we do. They are not insensate. Most humans, when given a knife or a captive bolt gun and told to go kill that cow on yonder would not. So we externalize the death-making to slaughterhouse workers who coincidentally also suffer:
> ...SHWs had significantly higher levels of depression compared with office workers, but not butchers. The difference in depression rates differed from study to study, ranging from 10% to 50% [1]
There's really no good, ethical argument to be made for the killing of animals for food or pleasure. Did we need to do it once to survive as a species? Yes. Are we largely living in a post-scarcity world where those practices should now be challenged? Yes.
Why should explain why something is NOT bad ? It's up to you to convince him (or others) that it is bad, and the reasoning "according to MY ethics it is bad" is not a good argument.
There is a good argument to be made that in the West we should eat less meat, but that doesn't mean removing it completely: it is harder to make a balanced vegan diet, so for most people that would mean a less healthy outcome that just eating a moderate amount of meat.
Because they're the one who made the claim without evidence or argument.
> It's up to you to convince him (or others) that it is bad
Yes, that's what I did.
> the reasoning "according to MY ethics it is bad" is not a good argument.
That wasn't my argument.
You're making something of a jump there - not eating meat equates to a vegetarian diet, not a vegan diet. One can argue about the merits of a vegan diet over a vegetarian one, but a vegetarian, non-vegan diet is already a big step up over a meat-heavy one, and a vegetarian diet including eggs and dairy doesn't really have any challenges in being balanced/healthy compared to a moderate-meat diet.
If you do not wish to eat meat for personal reasons you are free to do so of course but I object to the current trend of minority groups trying to impose their views to the whole of society and to paint those who disagree as 'wrong'.
I'm curious what you mean by "impose their views" with respect to meat-eating. Has a vegan ever tried to stop you from eating meat for example through physical force, threatening your livelihood, making meat illegal in their state, etc?
Don't get me wrong, I also dislike when strangers impose their moral, ethical, racial, political, or religious views on me.
But of all the groups that concern me, vegans are low on my list as their weapons mostly seem to be uncomfortably strong arguments on the internet and the occasional preachy Netflix documentary.
One could argue that meat eating is necessary for taking part on some people’s culture, which is true, but also shifting. And spreading the idea of vegetarianism is helpful in making that shift happen.
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01650...
I.e.: if the true impact of turning crops into meat were reflected in the price of a hamburger, demand elasticity would eventually result in much less production. Or: growing meat consumption is mostly a result of implicit subsidies to maintain status quo, ignore climate change,etc.
Obviously we are all people. The question is do we keep chasing an ever increasing population or do we accept that it cannot keep growing and should in fact probably decrease?
Most developed countries have birth rates below replacement rate so this is already happening. We need to accept it and adapt.
We aren't.
Every bit of evidence is that Human population is on the path to stabilizing. Developing countries plateau, and all that "India and china are going to outreproduce us!" rhetoric was stupidity; people extrapolating an S curve as if it were an infinite exponential curve.
All you have to do is give women an education and legal access to birth control and it turns out most humans do not want 50 kids. Women happily manage population control, with no moral problems.
I have yet to see a government declare that they will let population decrease and initiate programs to adapt. Perhaps Japan comes close but we'll see.
WE should consider that in the equation of "overpopulation", the other variable, "resource consumption", is far easier and more ethical to reduce.
The issue, of course, is that option 1 hurts others that aren't us, while option 2 will require changes from US, like not eating meat, reducing personal cars, reducing consumption and infinite growth in general.
> China’s outsized contribution to the global greening trend comes in large part (42%) from programs to conserve and expand forests. These were developed in an effort to reduce the effects of soil erosion, air pollution and climate change. Another 32% there – and 82% of the greening seen in India – comes from intensive cultivation of food crops.
If the green of pristine forests is replaced by the green desert of a monocultural eucalyptus planted forest, or the green of grass pastures, it's still a big ecological net loss.
The entire planet is greener. Everywhere. The planting did little.
> Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect
One of those Inconvenient Truths.
But it's not at all an """Incovenient""" truth. The fact that plants use CO2 to grow, and that more CO2 can result in more ruffage growing is uncontroversial.
It also does nothing to offset the actual problems with increasing CO2 levels!
Brazilian beef is frankly way less deforested than anything from the U.S. or Europe.
The three most forested countries in the world are Russia, Canada and Brazil in that order.
In all honesty I’m perfectly fine with the bans / boycotts it keeps farmers here poor and beef cheap.
Finland, Sweden and Japan are the top 3 fully industiralized nations for forested land as a percentage of land mass.
https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/AG.LND.FRST.ZS/r...
Russia 49.78%
Canada 38.70%
Brazil 59.42%
US 33.87%Europe is greener than 20 years ago.
Asia is greener than 20 years ago.
Africa is greener than 20 years ago.
The entire planet is greener than 20 years ago.
It has nothing to do with people planting trees and everything to do with Co2 being what plants eat.
This is mostly due to the fact after WW2 lot of people stopped farming in the hills and mountains, and moved to urban areas. There are plenty of ghost towns in the Italian mountains.
[1] (link in Italian) https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/in-italia-mai-cosi-tante-for...
"Forest" is a 3-D bulk tonnage of captured (for now at least) carbon dioxide.
This increase in the colour green that you tout hasn't made a dent in reducing the ever increasing amount of insulating CO2 in the atmosphere.
Otherwise yellow grasses being greener due to increased CO2 is of some small interest, but it's not the same as a similar area X height of large trees in terms of capture.
Just pragmnatic facts, not a "convenient" or "inconvenient" "truth".
Nice attempt at a tangent, pity it fell flat.
More to your implied point, deforestation can happen one place and afforestation/reforestation another at the same time. Even a net increase in forest worldwide doesn’t make the loss of Brazilian rainforests are any better
It's easy, its right to blame the Bolsonaro regime for having ramped up cattle farming in the Amazon leading to situations like this. It's harder to think of them when we have beef on our plates.
https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/seven-h...
Live exports should be entirely banned.
Also, don't think it's right to let Brazil off the hook here - it's their cattle ranching practices and export legislation.