McDonald's Eating Up The Rain Forest!!! (New Study. Must Read)

[Guest guest]

[Greenpeace downloads of this study are available

below. This is a true nightmare. Rick.]

 

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

APRIL 6, 2006

3:51 AM

 

CONTACT: Greenpeace

Gavin Edwards, Greenpeace International forests

campaign co-ordinator

(m) +31 652 391429

Pat Venditti, Greenpeace UK senior forests campaigner

(m) +44 797 337 5089 Matilda, Greenpeace International

Communications (m) +31 653 504701 Or see

http:www.greenpeace.org/forests

 

 

 

Greenpeace Investigation Links Fast Food Giants to

Amazon Destruction

Campaign launched to hold McDonald's accountable

 

 

LONDON - April 6 - Greenpeace today exposed the role

played by McDonald's in the destruction of the Amazon

rainforest. (1)

 

As part of a new campaign to tackle the latest threat

to the Amazon, Greenpeace has completed a year-long

undercover investigation into the global trade in

Amazon soya. The findings are today published in a new

report, Eating up the Amazon (2). Using satellite

images, aerial surveillance, previously unreleased

government documents and on-the-ground monitoring,

Greenpeace traced soya from criminal rainforest

destruction to McDonald's restaurants and to

supermarkets across Europe.

 

In response, this morning dozens of seven-foot-tall

chickens invaded McDonald's restaurants across the UK

and chained themselves to chairs. Scores of McDonald's

around the country, including Leicester Square,

London, were also fly-posted overnight with images of

Ronald McDonald wielding a chainsaw. In Munich,

Germany, protestors also gathered at McDonald's

European environmental affairs headquarters and called

on the company to stop destroying the Amazon

rainforest.

 

Greenpeace forests campaign co-ordinator, Gavin

Edwards, said: " Fast food giants like McDonald's are

trashing the Amazon for cheap meat. Every time you buy

a Chicken McNugget you could be taking a bite out of

the Amazon. "

 

Three US commodities giants, Archer Daniels Midland,

Bunge and Cargill, which control most of Europe's soya

market (3), are fuelling the rainforest destruction to

grow feed for animals in Europe. Cargill, which is

leading the invasion, has done deals with unscrupulous

farms that have illegally grabbed and deforested areas

of public and indigenous land. Some have even used

slave labour.

 

Cargill has illegally built its own port in the heart

of the Amazon, from which it exports the soya to the

Cargill terminal in Liverpool, UK. >From there, the

soya goes to Cargill-owned food producer, Sun Valley,

which feeds the soya to the chickens it uses to make

McNuggets, which it distributes to McDonald's

restaurants across Europe.

 

A recent report in scientific journal Nature (4)

warned that 40% of the Amazon will be lost by 2050 if

current trends in agricultural expansion continue,

threatening biodiversity and seriously contributing to

climate change. Soya monocultures also rely heavily on

toxic chemicals, and some also grow genetically

engineered soya in the Amazon.

 

Edwards added: " This crime stretches from the heart of

the Amazon across the entire European food industry.

Supermarkets and fast food giants, like McDonald's,

must make sure their food is free from the links to

the Amazon destruction, slavery and human rights

abuses. "

 

Greenpeace is an independent, campaigning organisation

that uses non-violent, creative confrontation to

expose global environmental problems, and to force

solutions essential to a green and peaceful future.

 

Notes to Editors:

 

(1) Greenpeace has documentary evidence that proves

the following:

 

 

The soya from Amazon farms is exported from Santarém

to Europe, along with non-Amazon soya. Cargill

exported over 220,000 tonnes of Brazilian soya from

Santarém to Liverpool in the UK from March 2005 to

February 2006.

Greenpeace has tracked Santarém soya from Cargill's

Liverpool facility to an animal feed producer whose

chickens are processed into Chicken McNuggets and

other products by Sun Valley. Senior Sun Valley staff

told Greenpeace 25% of their chicken feed comes from

Cargill's Liverpool facility.

Sun Valley supplies chicken to McDonald's across

Europe

Through separate McDonald's business units in

Wolverhampton and Orleans in France, Sun Valley is

McDonald's largest poultry supplier in Europe,

producing half of all chicken products used by

McDonald's across Europe.

In a meeting last week between Greenpeace and

McDonald's, the company did not deny that their

chicken is fed on Amazon Soya. Greenpeace first asked

McDonald's to account for their chicken feed three

months ago.

(2) A copy of the " Eating up the Amazon' is available

on:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/eating-up-the-amazon

A shorter crime file, based on the report:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/amazon-soya-crime-file

 

(3) Cargill, together with Archer Daniels Midland

(ADM) and Bunge, controls 60% of soya production in

Brazil and more than three-quarters of Europe's soya

crushing industry that supplies soya meal and oil to

the animal feed market.

 

(4) Nature, 23rd March 2006.