Reading 1 - Demand for Beef Speeds Destruction of Amazon Forest

Demand for Beef Speeds Destruction of Amazon forest

 

Índice

1. Prereading

    1.1. Do you know how meat production affects our planet?

            The Effects of Meat Eating on the Environment

    1.2. Key vocabulary

2. Reading

    2.1 Demand for beef speeds destruction of Amazon forest

3. Postreading

    3.1 Quiz

    3.2 Vocabulary

 

1. PREREADING

    1.1. Do you know how meat production affects our planet?

 

            The Effects of Meat Eating on the Environment

    2.2. Key vocabulary

2. READING

 

    2.1 Demand for beef speeds destruction of Amazon forest

According to a recent report, last year was a very bad year for deforestation in the Amazon  region of Brazil. Satellite pictures showed that almost 26,000 sq km of the world's largest continuous forest was lost, 40% more than in the previous year. And this year's loss could be greater, according to the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). 

 

The main reason for the destruction of the forest is the increasing demand for Brazilian beef in Europe. Many people are afraid that European cattle are still infected with mad cow disease and foot and mouth disease, so Brazilian beef is becoming more and more popular. The CIFOR report says that EU countries now take almost 40% of Brazil's 578,000 tonnes of exported beef. Egypt, Russia and Saudi Arabia between them import 35%. The US takes only 8% because it has strict limits on imports in order to protect its own beef producers.

 

"Beef exports are the main cause of the deforestation, as cattle ranchers are destroying the rainforests," said David Kaimowitz, the director general of CIFOR. He said that logging contributed only indirectly to deforestation. The number of cattle in the Amazon region more than doubled to 57 million between 1990 and 2002, the report says. "[In that time] the percentage of Europe's processed meat imports that came from Brazil rose from 40% to 74%. Markets in Russia and the Middle East are also responsible for much of this new demand for Brazilian beef."

 

But the report does not agree with the American argument that GM-free soya farming for the European market is leading to deforestation. "Although there has been a lot of concern in recent years about the increase of soybean cultivation in the Amazon region, it only leads to a small percentage of total deforestation," the authors say. Mr Kaimowitz said that the rate of Amazonian deforestation could increase in the next few years as foot and mouth disease disappears from Brazil.
 

The report says that giant ranching operations linked to European supermarkets are now dominating the beef export market. "In the 1970s and 1980s most of the meat from the Amazon was being produced by small ranchers selling to local slaughterhouses. Very large commercial ranchers linked to supermarkets are now targeting the whole of Brazil and the global market," Mr Kaimowitz said.

Last month President Luis Inacio (Lula) da Silva announced new measures worth $133m to control the rate of deforestation in the Amazon and provide greater support for local regions and community forestry. "The government's approach goes in the right direction, but without urgent action the Brazilian Amazon could lose an additional area the size of Denmark over the next 18 months."

CIFOR recommends that the Brazilian government should also try to keep ranchers off government land, restrict road projects that open up the forest, and provide economic incentives to maintain land as forest.

John Vidal

The Guardian Weekly, page 3

3. POST-READING

  3.1 Quiz