EU POLICY BRIEFING

September 2024

SECRET INGREDIENT:

A shocking scandal in the chicken we eat and its lessons for European lawmakers

Briefing for EU Policymakers, September 2024

Fresh evidence links deforestation, land grabbing, corruption, and violence against communities in the Brazilian Cerrado to the supply chains of major soy exporters to the European Union (EU). Earthsight’s research (outlined in a report to be published this month) shows that chicken sold by fast-food giant McDonald’s and Europe’s leading supermarkets – Carrefour, Intermarché, Edeka and Albert Heijn – is linked to illegalities through the Brazilian soy used in animal feed. European consumers risk complicity in environmental and rights abuses overseas.

Key recommendations for EU policymakers:

1. The Commission must resist the calls for delay and enforce the EUDR on time
2. To ensure that the EUDR is effectively and fully enforced, certificates offered by voluntary schemes should not be treated as evidence of compliance with the law by competent authorities
3. The EUDR must be expanded to cover other wooded land (OWL) to prevent EU supply chains from driving the loss of the Cerrado and unintended spillover effects

More than 90 per cent of the soy entering Europe is processed into animal feed for the meat industry.ⁱ Dirty soy exported to the EU by Bunge and Cargill is made into animal feed by European companies, including De Heus.ⁱⁱ Chicken fed with De Heus’ animal feed is purchased by Plukon Food Group. Plukon ranks fourth among European chicken slaughterhousesⁱⁱⁱ and distributes its chicken products to fast-food chain McDonald’s^iv and supermarkets across Europe – Carrefour (France), Intermarché (France), Edeka (Germany) and Albert Heijn (Netherlands).^v

The explosion of global soy production in recent decades has been at the expense of critical ecosystems and the communities that live in and around them. Soy expansion is the second-biggest driver of deforestation and land conversion across South America,^vi responsible for the loss of 5 million hectares between 2001 and 2015 in Brazil alone^vii – an area larger than the Netherlands. This comes at a severe cost to the climate: deforestation and conversion linked to the 2020 Brazilian soy harvest resulted in the release of 103 million tonnes of CO₂e^viii – almost equal to the annual carbon emissions of Belgium.^ix Brazil is the world’s largest soy producer and exporter, and Europe is its second-largest market.^x

Non-compliance with the EUDR

The tainted soy exported by Bunge and Cargill is produced by three major agribusinesses in western Bahia state – Horita Group, Mizote Group and Franciosi Agro Group. While Horita Group has ties to corruption, illegal deforestation, human rights abuses and violence against traditional communities,^xi both Mizote Group and Franciosi Agro Group are linked to cases of recent illegal forest clearance,^xii evidencing a non-negligible risk that the soy produced in these companies’ farms is non-compliant with the upcoming EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).

Since the December 2020 cut-off date for the zero-deforestation requirement of the EUDR, Mizote and Franciosi Agro have cleared over 23,000 hectares of native Cerrado vegetation within their soy farms.^xiii By overlaying this deforestation with data from the EU Observatory platform, which has baseline maps indicating forest cover in December 2020, it becomes clear that part of the deforested area was classified as forest according to the definition adopted in the EUDR.^xiv In several cases, this deforestation took place inside protected areas or was carried out without the necessary authorisation.^xv Bahia’s environment agency has linked Horita to the illegal deforestation of over 11,000ha of native Cerrado vegetation in its soy farms between 2012 and 2018.^xvi 

Meanwhile, several farms owned by Horita are linked to land grabbing of traditional communities’ lands. This includes Horita’s 100,000 hectares^xvii within the notorious Estrondo agribusiness estate, which overlaps territories inhabited by geraizeiro communities for over 200 years.^xviii Members of geraizeiro communities have suffered violence, intimidation and harassment at the hands of armed men working for Estrondo.^xix Horita is also linked to land grabbing of the land of the fundo e fecho de pasto traditional community of Capão do Modesto.^xx Evidence of land grabbing in these cases is so strong that Bahia’s Attorney General has filed lawsuits against the agribusinesses implicated in them, including Horita, and highlighted both cases as some of the worst examples of land grabbing in Brazil.^xxi

Horita is also linked to one of Brazil’s largest corruption scandals. ‘Operation Far West’ exposed widespread corruption involving judges, lawyers and agribusinesses, who conspired to secure favourable court rulings to legitimise approximately 800,000 hectares of land grabs. Walter Horita, one of the Horita Group’s owners, was listed as one of the individuals implicated – accused of bribing justice officials – and was reported to have paid BRL30 million (EUR4.98 million) to the authorities as part of a plea bargain.^xxii

Certified soy

Two of the three soy producers are certified by the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS),^xxiii whose standard and certification processes allow agribusinesses linked to deforestation and rights violations in the Cerrado to appear ethical and sustainable. To become an RTRS-certified producer, companies do not have to certify all their farms; instead, they can cherry-pick those they wish to receive the RTRS stamp of approval while carrying out rampant deforestation on others, as is the case with Franciosi Agro. Horita’s soy farms linked to land grabbing and the illegal deforestation mentioned above are RTRS-certified. These cases demonstrate that certification schemes do not rid supply chains of illegalities, environmental and human rights abuses, and should not be seen as evidence of compliance with the EUDR.

In response to Earthsight’s findings, RTRS suspended Horita and Franciosi Agro’s certificates pending the results of an investigation it has launched. 

Implications and recommendations for EU policies

1. The EUDR must be enforced on time

The EUDR requires that EU supply chains be deforestation-free and compliant with relevant producer country laws, such as those related to corruption and human rights abuses. But in the run-up to the EUDR taking effect in December 2024, industry sectors with some of the largest deforestation footprints in the world and egregious track records of human rights infringements are seeking to delay and weaken the law.^xxiv

Earthsight’s investigation highlights what is at stake if industry efforts succeed: tainted exports to the EU will continue unabated if the EUDR is postponed. Enforcing the law on time and effectively is imperative to ensure European supply chains stop driving deforestation and human rights abuses across the globe, and to meet the EU’s climate and biodiversity goals.

2. The EUDR must be effectively and fully enforced

To be effective at ridding EU supply chains of deforestation and illegalities, EUDR enforcement must learn from the mistakes of the EU Timber Regulation. Major commodity traders, including Bunge and Cargill, are likely to be best prepared for the EUDR and have monitoring mechanisms in place. Authorities responsible for enforcement must avoid treating the existence of due diligence systems as an indicator of compliance with the law. Instead, they must properly examine whether the systems put in place by these companies are truly sufficient to guarantee negligible risk of deforestation or illegalities in their products. 

While certification schemes have been given no formal role within the EUDR, it is likely that they will offer standards aimed at helping companies comply with the regulation. It is imperative that certificates offered by voluntary schemes are not treated as evidence of compliance with the EUDR by enforcement authorities.

3. The EUDR must be expanded to cover other wooded land (OWL)

The Cerrado faces some of the most aggressive agricultural expansion in the world: deforestation rates have surged in recent years, making it one of Brazil’s most depleted biomes.^xxv Clearing Cerrado vegetation for agriculture generates as much carbon per year as the annual emissions of 50 million cars.^xxvi The EUDR needs to go beyond its current, narrow focus on forests to also protect other types of ecosystems, including the less densely forested ones common in the Cerrado.^xxvii Its current exclusion of other ecosystems leaves large swathes of the biome unprotected, and may result in greater unintended spillover effects as agribusinesses seek to relocate their operations to areas where they will not be required to comply with the regulation. Expanding the law to other wooded land will also ease the EUDR’s implementation, particularly in biomes with high heterogeneity of ecosystem types.

– END OF BRIEFING –

For queries, please email Rafael Pieroni, Team Lead: Latin America, at rafaelpieroni@earthsight.org.uk, or Fyfe Strachan, Policy & Comms Lead, at fyfestrachan@earthsight.org.uk

Earthsight is a non-profit organisation that uses in-depth investigations to expose environmental and social crime, injustice and the links to global consumption. We believe in the power of investigative research to bring attention to pressing human rights and environmental issues.