Supermarket chicken linked to deforestation in Brazil

Supermarket chicken linked to cut down trees - 7th December 2020

Tesco, Lidl and Asda are supermarkets in the UK. They all sell chicken from the UK. But there is a problem. The chickens eat soya beans. UK farmers give chickens beans from Brazil. Farmers in Brazil grow the beans. They grow the beans in the Cerrado area in Brazil. The farmers cut down trees for this. This is bad for the world.

The Cerrado area is very big. It is around 22% of Brazil. Lots of plants and animals live there. The plants take carbon from the air. This helps the world.

But 50% of the Cerrado is now farmland. Farmers grow soya beans for China, Europe and other places.

The Brazilian government isn't worried about cutting down trees. It makes a lot of money from soya. It wants to continue selling soya beans.

People in the UK eat a billion chickens every year. Many chickens eat soya beans from the Cerrado. But people don't know this. The supermarkets give some information about it. But shoppers don't have all the information.