As deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is largely driven by cattle farming, the Brazilian meat industry is increasingly confronted by an image problem. As the international community calls for more stringent action, is traceability the solution?

Sao Paulo: According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), up to 94% of deforestation in Brazil could be illegal and some 80% of deforestation in the Amazon is driven specifically by cattle ranching.

As trees capture carbon dioxide and are thus a natural alley in the fight against global warming, the international community is increasingly concerned about what British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called “the great chainsaw massacre.”

In November, the COP26 on climate change saw over 140 countries, including Brazil, agree to halt deforestation by 2030.

That same month the European Commission launched a draft law to ban the import of wood, beef, soya, palm oil, cacao and coffee from illegally deforested areas. The proposal could become law as early as next year.

Meanwhile, there is a growing awareness in Islamic countries that while a cow may be slaughtered according to Sharia principles (halal), if the animal was raised on illegally obtained and deforested land its meat cannot be considered halal (permissible).

No wonder therefore that the Brazilian halal sector and the meat industry as a whole have started to perceive deforestation as a very serious issue.

“Traceability and sustainability are not an option,” said Miguel Gularte, CEO of the Marfrig on December 7 at the Global Halal Brazil forum in São Paulo. “Traceability and sustainability are the only option.”

With a slaughter capacity of over 31,000 heads of cattle a day, Marfrig is the world’s second biggest producer of beef. Operating in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and the USA, it exports to over 100 countries, including many Muslim countries.

In July 2020, in collaboration with the Dutch Initiative for Sustainable Trade (IDH), Marfrig launched the Verde + Plan, which aims at making the company’s supply chain 100% “sustainable, traceable, and deforestation-free” by 2030. According to Gularte, the plan requires a $100 million investment over the next five years.

“Brazil is a country of some 8.5 million square kilometres, which poses some difficulties when it comes to traceability,” said Gularte. “But over the past year and a half we managed to bring over 1,200 producers into the system. They produce some 200,000 heads of cattle per year. The process of traceability is a process of integrating, not excluding.”

Brazil has some 264 million head of cattle, according to the US Food and Agricutural Service.

Marfrig is not alone in implementing tracebility. In April, Brazilian beef giant JBS launched the Transparent Livestock Farming Platform (TLFP). Using blockchain technology, TLFP will enable monitoring and traceability of beef cattle production in the Amazon.

The following month, in May, the Federation of Muslim Associations in Brazil (FAMBRAS) introduced Sys Halal, a halal certification traceability system, which can be accessed on any device that has internet access.

The end consumer will be able to scan the QR code of a halal certified product and access information in all production stages.

“The consumer can access videos and documents to see where the animal is from, what food it was fed, and follow the entire process from birth to slaughter,” said Ali Hussein El Zoghbi, Vice-President of FAMBRAS. “If the animal is somehow causing harm to the environment, it cannot be halal.”

These initiatives will no doubt be welcomed by concerned consumers, both Muslims and non-Muslims, although some might wonder if it is not too little too late.

On November 19, only days after the COP26 summit in Glasgow had agreed on ending deforestation by 2030, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) revealed that between August 2020 and July 2021, 13,235 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest had been cleared – a 15 year high.

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