Paving the Amazon with Soy

To avoid Mad Cow Disease, cattle owners have shifted to a soy-based diet. This skyrockets the need for soy and this encourages the deforestation of the Brazilian jungles. We kill our planet to prevent us from being killed by the animals we use for food.

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Paving the Amazon with Soy
World Bank Bows to Audit of Maggi Loan
by Sasha Lilley, Special to CorpWatch
December 16th, 2004

The sprawling state of Mato Grosso, in central west Brazil, could be thought a paradise of sorts, at least from a distance. The lush rainforest of the Amazon basin, often called the “lungs of the world,” straddles the state, as does the grassy Brazilian savanna or cerrado. Parrots, jaguars and pumas are just a few of the abundant species found in the savanna, considered one of the most biodiverse in the world, along with endangered species like the maned wolf, anteater and river-dwelling giant otter.

The landscape, however, is rapidly being altered as vast fields of soybeans and cattle ranches replace grasslands and forests. Soy rules Mato Grosso and it's not the soy that much of the world associates with the ostensibly eco-friendly, vegetarian diet, either.

In the wake of the Mad Cow disease scare, soy producers have benefited from increased demand in affluent countries for meat from cows that are fed soy meal, rather than animal-based feed. This is only the latest in a series of factors that have allowed a company named the André Maggi Group to spearhead, along with the Brazilian government, the expansion of soy in Mato Grosso and adjacent states over the last two decades, with disturbing consequences.

more...
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11756

but who are we to complain when much of North America and Europe were deforested centuries ago to make way for agriculture?