Industrial Animal Agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon: Environmental and Ethical Disaster by Kate Grantham

Abstract

The mass deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest caused by industrial animal agriculture is a rapidly growing issue that has severe environmental and ethical repercussions, and is not being addressed appropriately due politically-inclined manipulations on behalf of actors in the industry. This paper will begin by outlining how Brazil’s animal agriculture industry has come to be a significant global player. This will be followed by a discussion of how animal agriculture is intricately intertwined with environmental degradation. Next will be a description of how animal agriculture is also an ethical disaster, followed by a review of the industry stakeholders and the influence they have over the public and political discourse on this issue. The article will be concluded with proposals to address these problems.

Résumé

Résumé La déforestation massive de la forêt tropicale amazonienne située au Brésil est causée par l’agriculture animale industrielle et ceci est un problème qui ne cesse de croître très rapidement et qui a de graves répercussions environnementales et éthiques. Celle-ci n’est point abordée de manière appropriée en raison de manipulations à caractère politique de la part des acteurs de cette industrie. Ce document commence par décrire comment cette industrie d’élevage au Brésil est devenue un acteur mondiale important. Par la suite, une discussion sera élaborée sur la façon dont l’agriculture animale est intimement liée à la dégradation de l’environnement. Ensuite, il y aura une description de la façon dont l’agriculture animale est également un désastre éthique en prenant bien soin d’identifier les parties prenantes de l’industrie et de leur influence sur le discours public et politique. L’article se conclura par des propositions pour résoudre ces problèmes.

Introduction

The global demand for meat products has been steadily increasing in recent history, particularly as international trade has intensified as Western and increasingly prosperous Asian societies have raised their meat consumption. As a result, agricultural practices have grown to an industrial scale in order to meet the rapidly climbing demand. The demand from the United States (US) that had previously been serviced domestically has gone overseas, mainly to Brazil. Consequently, the tropical rainforests in Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest are falling subject to destructive practices to create grazing range for livestock. This paper will begin by outlining how Brazil’s animal agriculture industry came to be such a prominent player in the international meat industry. This will lead to a discussion of how animal agriculture can contribute to large scale environmental degradation. There will then be a description of how animal agriculture is also an ethical disaster, with direct impacts on the well-being of both humans and animals. Following this will be a review of the industry stakeholders and the influence they have over the discourse on this issue. This will be followed by proposals to address these problems. In sum, the mass deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest arising from industrial animal agriculture is a proliferating disaster that has severe environmental and ethical consequences. The worsening issue is not being addressed appropriately due to industry stakeholders and their political influence controlling the discourse in order to protect their own interests. The growth of the Brazilian farm animal sector can be closely linked to increasing global demand for Brazilian beef. Livestock disease trends in the US, including concerns over both mad cow disease and foot and mouth disease amongst cattle, has led the US cattle industry to turn to Brazil to supply beef to meet the growing demand both domestically and internationally.1 Brazil is an attractive choice for producers due to low land prices in the Amazon, Brazilian currency devaluations, and the swift expansion of the region’s road and electricity infrastructures. 2 These factors make industrial beef production in the Amazon very profitable for producers and marketing agencies. The cattle industry in Brazil has grown so dramatically that the country now has the largest cattle herd in the world, growing from 26 million heads in 1990 to 57 million heads in 2002. 3 While the growth of this sector has resulted in short term economic gains for Brazil, the wider impacts both nationally and globally of industrial farming on this scale are both significant and largely negative. The farm animal sector in Brazil is the single largest anthropogenic user of land in the world, using approximately 33% of the planet’s arable land surface. 4 Industrial animal agriculture has led to a multitude of other negative environmental effects: extensive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (18% of all GHG emissions globally), increasing air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. 5 This is part of a global trend exceedingly favouring intensive production systems over sustainable production systems, as the former tend to be more profitable. Therefore, intensive production systems can be expected to become more widespread and problematic. 6

Industrial Animal Agriculture as an Environmental Disaster

Industrial animal agriculture can be considered an environmental disaster due its direct operational impact on extensive deforestation, contamination, and pollution. The burgeoning farm animal sector has caused mass deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, with the accumulated deforested area serving animal agriculture amounting to 58.7 million hectares by 2004.7 Farm- land expansion in Brazil’s tropical zone is destroying the largest amount of rainforest of any industrial activities in the Amazon.8 The amount of land used for animal pasture is over 600% larger than that used for all crops in the Amazon combined.9 Further, the rate of growth has been accelerating, as cattle ranching is responsible for 70% of the ongoing deforestation that occurs in the Brazilian Amazon and as the demand for Brazilian beef continues to climb.10 Between 1997 and 2003, the volume of beef exports in Brazil increased by 500%. Further, global farm production is expected to double from its current levels by 2050.11 Deforestation is one of the primary consequences of industrial animal agriculture, and its impact cannot be underestimated. Tropical deforestation contributes to approximately 10-20% of global carbon emissions, producing 2.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2).12 Further consequences include loss of a significant carbon sink, desertification, soil erosion, and loss of biodiversity. Carbon sinks are also critical to the mitigation of global climate change. They provide long-term carbon storage in living biomass and soils. The Amazon acts as a vital carbon sink that regulates the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, containing 25% of the remaining terrestrial carbon sink.13 When widespread deforestation occurs, carbon sinks are destroyed, thus simultaneously releasing carbon and reducing the carbon sequestration (the process of trees absorbing carbon and storing it), effectively reducing the carbon stores in the atmosphere. This means that as trees are cut down, they are no longer able to store the carbon they once did; simultaneously, there will be fewer trees to continue to absorb the carbon in the atmosphere. Loss of both flora and fauna in the Amazon is a problem that cannot be overlooked, since 25% of the world’s biodiversity resides in the Amazon rainforest.14 As deforestation escalates, many species that are unique to the Amazon’s biodiversity are at risk of extinction.15 Thus, the key harmful impact of the animal agriculture industry in Brazil is widespread deforestation, posing significant and direct threats to both the local and the global environment.

The Multidimensional Ethical Issues Associated with Animal Farming

The conditions under which industrial animal farming operate pose not only environmental issues, but ethical ones as well. Many consider the conditions under which animals are raised to be destructive to animal welfare.16 During crucial stages of growth , animals are often forced into tight living spaces that cause psychological distress and aggression.17 They are also subject to unnatural diets, growth hormone injections, and widespread abuse.18 It has been estimated that 10% of animals used in industrial animal farming die while they are still on the farm due to mistreatment.19 This problem has become so prolific that it has developed into a normalized practice, considered to be an inevitable byproduct of efficient agriculture.20 This tradeoff of the welfare of living beings for profit is something that must be critically analysed as unethical. However, the practices in Brazil can be argued to be comparatively better than those in the US, as Brazil’s constitution establishes laws for animal welfare.21 Animal protection laws are outlined in the Environmental Crimes Act of 1998, which criminalizes abuse and mistreatment of animals.22 Further, in Brazil, animal welfare may be a higher priority because they need their export-oriented production to be competitive with European markets.23 While their institutions and laws may raise the bar for welfare standards, animal mistreatment in Brazilian industrial farms is still thought to be fairly common, as enforcement of animal welfare laws is considered to be no more effective than the land title laws that should protect forests from degradation.24 Animal agriculture poses ethical issues that not only threaten animals, but humans as well. For example, the industry imposes severely destructive practices on the home environment of the many indigenous hunter-gatherer societies that still reside in the Amazon rainforest. Thus, the very existence and livelihood of these indigenous communities is threatened.25 Further, a vast amount of the land conversion occuring in the Amazon is no more than illegal land-grabbing.In particular, large corporations are forcibly removing indigenous groups without any legitimate legal authority to operate.26 Through loss of land, indigenous communities are not only having their survival threatened, but also their identities, as connection with ancestral lands is a pillar to their rights claims as indigenous citizens.27 This problem is worsened due to the fact that the Brazilian government predominantly enables these illegal deforestation activities, as there are institutional weaknesses that enhance instability in the state’s capacity to enforce surveillance and disciplinary policies.28 The government’s failure to mitigate both the legal and illegal establishment of cattle-producing operations reflects their inability to protect the indigenous citizens who rely on the Amazon rainforest to sustain their livelihoods. It also demonstrates their insensitivity to the well-being of their non-Indigenous population, as some large cattle farms in more isolated areas of the Amazon have demonstrated worker conditions very similar to slavery or indentured labour. For example, there have been reports of workers being prevented from leaving the site and trapped in debt bondage.29 These realities further contribute to the disastrous and exploitative nature of this problem. Nature, animals, and humans alike are all being harmed by the practices involved in industrial animal agriculture, and they are being allowed to continue and proliferate because powerful players are benefiting from the operations.30

Discourse as a Major Practice Preventing Effective Remedies

Industrial animal agricultural practices pose issues that are largely not addressed due to the discursive power that industry stakeholders wield over how risks contributing to global climate change are constructed.31 For example, Bristow and Fitzgerald discovered that industry stakeholders actively downplay the link between global climate change and animal agriculture.32 Further, the industry stakeholders notoriously influence government actors to repress dialogues that would demonstrate the negative effects of animal agriculture.33 As Cassuto and Saville argue, industrial agriculture has grown so rapidly because powerful industry stakeholders deliberately obscure and downplay its extensive disadvantages.34 Both public and private institutions have underestimated the discursive habits and impacts of this agricultural sector. Therefore, action is required to mitigate the rapidly worsening effects that this industry is having on the planet. The dire situation is also exacerbated because consumers who, although they are conscious of the issues that these practices cause, are unwilling to change their habits to reduce their impacts on a distant part of South America, even though such actions could benefit their own planet. Moreover, the meat industry stakeholders are extremely powerful and have worked effectively to prevent the spread of awareness about the extensive adverse consequences of their actions. They have also benefited from the recent election of a Brazilian President Bolsonaro who is indifferent to these issues, and openly scornful of international concerns about deforestation.35 And yet, there have been significant breakthroughs in spreading knowledge about industrial animal agriculture. Several documentaries (for example, Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret) and articles have detailed the detrimental effects of animal agriculture. Thankfully, this information often reaches a wide and growing audience. However, there is a limit to the persuasive, meaningful power of these sources to change consumer habits; many of those who are aware of the issues are ambivalent or averse to altering their consumption patterns, even though they are increasingly aware of the adverse effects. To address this disaster, industrial operations as well as consumption patterns must be confronted. The growth of this sector reflects growing demand from consumers. Consequently, industry producers are producing more to supply enough goods to meet this demand. If consumers were to shift their tastes and preferences towards more sustainable options to regulate and ultimately reduce the aggregate demand for these meat products, then the industry would correspondingly shrink their production operations. However, this is not easy to accomplish. Studies suggest that, although people have demonstrated a willingness to pay for welfare-friendly products, purchasing patterns are inconsistent with this claim.36 The majority of the demand for meat products come from the US and Western Europe, and increasingly from Asia. As the Brazilian animal agriculture industry is almost completely reliant on exports to these parts of the world, it is these societies whose consumption patterns need to be confronted. Industrial practices also need to be addressed. As Heitschmidt et al state, sustainable agriculture needs to stop being viewed as a management philosophy, and needs to start being viewed as a method of operation.37 Steps that can be taken at the industrial scale include putting an end to land grabbing expansion projects.38 Exploitative industrial practices have already ravaged so much of the Amazon; therefore, expansion of such destructive projects cannot be allowed to continue. In order to stop the expansion of these practices, the relevant government can increase enforcement of illegal land grabs and give at-risk areas protected status.39 However, the current political leadership in Brazil seems to reject these issues as priorities. Public actors at the local and state level need to create strong alliances with grassroots and international civil society organizations in order to strengthen their knowledge about environmental issues and motivate them to enforce environmental law more effectively.40 Partnerships between local social movements and federal prosecuting officers have proven to be effective in the enforcement of environmental law.41 Further, providing economic incentives or subsidies to those who do practice sustainable animal agriculture, minimizing the use of pesticides and other products that contribute to water pollution, and using environmentally-friendly machinery that releases fewer GHGs into the atmosphere, need to be implemented. Ultimately, the self-interest of the private sector needs to be stimulated in order to encourage them to obey environmental law, in general, and support the animal agriculture industry, in particular.42

Conclusion

The issue of large scale industrial animal agriculture as an active environmental and ethical disaster is not one that will not be solved in the foreseeable future. Deeply-embedded cultural practices and the current political environment in Brazil must be confronted and altered in order to ensure the sustainable well-being of the planet. No other sector, including the transportation sector, contributes more to global climate change than industrial animal agriculture.43 However, there are multiple, specific actions that both public and private actors may take to tackle the long-standing and exploitative effects of these industrial practices. For example, this problem and its dire consequences must be more widely publicized. Moreover, the discursive power that influential stakeholders possess must be countered and dismantled. Climate change is an emerging catastrophe, with disproportionate effects on all aspects of ecosystems, as well as on society’s most vulnerable populations. As the leading cause of the growing environmental crisis, humans must act now to rectify the damage that we have imposed on others and on the planet itself. The key lesson from this case study is that individuals have the power to not only target and mitigate corporate interests which lead to environmental destruction, but also to shape the discourse around the issue in order to prioritize sustainability and minority rights.

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