McDonald's and European Food Corps. Linked to
Amazon Destruction and Mass Slavery
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by Greenpeace April 6, 2006
LONDON, England
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Greenpeace investigation links fast food giants to Amazon destruction Campaign launched to hold McDonald's accountable
Download full Greenpeace report eating-up-the-amazon.pdf
London, April 6, 2006 - Greenpeace today exposed the role played by
McDonald's in the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. (1)
As part of a new campaign to tackle the latest threat to the Amazon,
Greenpeace has completed a year-long undercover investigation into the
global trade in Amazon soya. The findings are today published in a new
report, Eating up the Amazon (2). Using satellite images, aerial
surveillance, previously unreleased government documents and
on-the-ground monitoring, Greenpeace traced soya from criminal
rainforest destruction to McDonald's restaurants and to supermarkets
across Europe.
In response, this morning dozens of seven-foot-tall chickens invaded
McDonald's restaurants across the UK and chained themselves to chairs.
Scores of McDonald's around the country, including Leicester Square,
London, were also fly-posted overnight with images of Ronald McDonald
wielding a chainsaw. In Munich, Germany, protestors also gathered at
McDonald's European environmental affairs headquarters and called on the
company to stop destroying the Amazon rainforest.
Greenpeace forests campaign co-ordinator, Gavin Edwards, said:
"Fast food giants like McDonald's are trashing the Amazon for cheap
meat. Every time you buy a Chicken McNugget you could be taking a bite
out of the Amazon."
Three US commodities giants, Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill,
which control most of Europe's soya market (3), are fuelling the
rainforest destruction to grow feed for animals in Europe. Cargill,
which is leading the invasion, has done deals with unscrupulous farms
that have illegally grabbed and deforested areas of public and
indigenous land. Some have even used slave labour.
Cargill has illegally built its own port in the heart of the Amazon,
from which it exports the soya to the Cargill terminal in Liverpool, UK.
From there, the soya goes to Cargill-owned food producer, Sun Valley,
which feeds the soya to the chickens it uses to make McNuggets, which it
distributes to McDonald's restaurants across Europe.
A recent report in scientific journal Nature (4) warned that 40% of the
Amazon will be lost by 2050 if current trends in agricultural expansion
continue, threatening biodiversity and seriously contributing to climate
change. Soya monocultures also rely heavily on toxic chemicals, and some
also grow genetically engineered soya in the Amazon.
Edwards added: "This crime stretches from the heart of the Amazon across
the entire European food industry. Supermarkets and fast food giants,
like McDonald's, must make sure their food is free from the links to the
Amazon destruction, slavery and human rights abuses."
Greenpeace is an independent, campaigning organisation that uses
non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental
problems, and to force solutions essential to a green and peaceful future.
For further information or to arrange interviews please contact:
Gavin Edwards, Greenpeace International forests campaign co-ordinator
(m) +31 652 391429
Pat Venditti, Greenpeace UK senior forests campaigner (m) +44 797 337 5089
Matilda, Greenpeace International Communications (m) +31 653 504701
Or see http:www.greenpeace.org/forests
(1) Greenpeace has documentary evidence that proves the following:
* The soya from Amazon farms is exported from Santarém to Europe, along
with non-Amazon soya. Cargill exported over 220,000 tonnes of Brazilian
soya from Santarém to Liverpool in the UK from March 2005 to February 2006.
* Greenpeace has tracked Santarém soya from Cargill's Liverpool facility
to an animal feed producer whose chickens are processed into Chicken
McNuggets and other products by Sun Valley. Senior Sun Valley staff told
Greenpeace 25% of their chicken feed comes from Cargill's Liverpool
facility.
* Sun Valley supplies chicken to McDonald's across Europe
* Through separate McDonald's business units in Wolverhampton and
Orleans in France, Sun Valley is McDonald's largest poultry supplier in
Europe, producing half of all chicken products used by McDonald's across
Europe.
* In a meeting last week between Greenpeace and McDonald's, the company
did not deny that their chicken is fed on Amazon Soya. Greenpeace first
asked McDonald's to account for their chicken feed three months ago.
(2) A copy of the Greenpeace Report "Eating up the Amazon' is available here at:
eating-up-the-amazon.pdf
A shorter crime file, based on the report:
www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/amazon-soya-crime-file
(3) Cargill, together with Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Bunge,
controls 60% of soya production in Brazil and more than three-quarters
of Europe's soya crushing industry that supplies soya meal and oil to
the animal feed market.
(4) Nature, 23rd March 2006.
--
Matilda Bradshaw
Greenpeace International
W: +31 (0) 20 718 2068
M: +31 (0) 6535 04701
Press Hot line +31 (0) 6 290 01141
Press Desk Fax +31 (0) 20 5148156
www.greenpeace.org/international_en/press
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Source: Greenpeace
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