12 | New Scientist | 28 September 2019Analysis WildfiresBRAZIL’s president Jair Bolsonaro
has been called “Captain
Chainsaw” for his rhetoric about
the need to exploit resources in
the Amazon. Many see this as
the impetus for the rocketing
deforestation and ensuing fires
in the rainforest this year.
But there is another side to the
story. The forest is often burned to
make way for cattle ranches, and
much of the meat they produce is
sold in other countries – Brazil is
the world’s biggest exporter of
beef. That begs the question: are
beef-eaters in countries like the
UK and US partly to blame for the
rainforest going up in smoke? It
turns out the answer could be yes.
An investigation of Brazilian
beef supply chains by Trase, a
partnership of non-governmental
organisations, has found that
cattle ranching led to the loss
of, on average, 5800 square
kilometres of forest each year
between 2015 and 2017. This
estimate was arrived at by cross
referencing beef trade information
with high-resolution satellite data
showing deforestation.
A single exporting company,
JBS, was linked to more thana third of all the deforestation
over the period. It has made
a commitment to allow zero
deforestation in the Amazon.
“The problem is the commitment
is only partially implemented and
limited in scope,” says Erasmus
zu Ermgassen at the Catholic
University of Louvain in Belgium,
who worked on the Trase analysis.
He says that companies tend
to check only that their direct
suppliers aren’t engaging in
deforestation. However, this leavesa blind spot further down the
supply chain; those direct suppliers
may have got their cattle from
other suppliers that use ranches in
areas that have been deforested.
JBS’s zero deforestation
commitment also applies only
to the Amazon. That leaves aside
the Cerrado, a huge and highly
biologically diverse savannah
area in Brazil, where JBS also
operates. The Trase analysis
found a lot of deforestationlinked to cattle ranches in this area.
A spokesperson for JBS says
the Trase analysis is misleading
and that the firm has an
“unwavering commitment to
combat, discourage and eliminate
deforestation in the Amazon”.
Who is eating all the meat?
In 2017, China was the biggest
importer of Brazil’s beef, taking
about 38 per cent of it. Egypt and
Russia took another 10 per cent
each. But high-income countries
buy it too. The US imported
almost 3 per cent, and though it
suspended fresh beef imports in
June 2017 over safety concerns,
the Trump administration wants
to resume them.
The UK imported almost
2 per cent and the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism (BIJ) has
found JBS canned beef sold at the
Co-op supermarket and supplied
to NHS Supply Chain, the company
that supplies hospital trusts in
England and Wales. The NGO
Earthsight has found JBS beef
at Sainsbury’s, Lidl, Asda and
Morrisons too.
Peter Andrews of the British
Retail Consortium says its
members, which include these five
supermarkets, “take every effort to
ensure the products they sell have
no links to deforestation”. NHS
Supply Chain told the BIJ it was
committed to “procuring products
responsibly and sustainably”.
This means that consumers and
politicians in richer countries could
potentially exert leverage to reduce
deforestation. “One way forward
would be for the EU to ban any
beef or soy products from entering
the EU that could not be definitively
guaranteed as sustainably
produced,” says Mark Maslin
at University College London. ❚FL
ORIANKOPP
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ROKE
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OCKNews
The Amazon is often
burned to clear areas
for cattle ranching38%
Amount of Brazilian beef
imported by China in 2017“ These moons could be
covered in snowball-like
structures or maybe a
layer of huge ice spikes”
Are consumers to blame for the Amazon fires? The
production of beef for export has been linked to deforestation
and fires in the rainforest, says Adam VaughanAstronomyLeah CraneTHE inner moons of Saturn are
unexpectedly bright, probably
because one of the other moons
is hurling snow at them.
The finding comes from radio
frequency images of the planet’s
satellites that were captured by
the Cassini spacecraft.
Alice Le Gall at the University
of Paris-Saclay in France and her
colleagues analysed the probe’s
radar observations and found that
three moons – Mimas, Enceladus
and Tethys – seem to be twice as
bright as previously thought. They
presented their work last week at
a joint meeting of the European
Planetary Science Congress and
the Division for Planetary Sciences.
The brightness can be partly
explained by Enceladus. It has huge
geysers that spew water from its
subsurface ocean into space, which
then freezes and snows down onthe nearby moons and on Enceladus
itself. Le Gall and her colleagues
calculated that this layer of ice
and snow should be at least a few
tens of centimetres thick. “Now
we know that the snow is actually
accumulating, it’s not just a thin
veneer but a much thicker layer
of water ice,” she says.
But even deep snow can’t fully
account for how bright the moons
appear. This suggests some other
reflective structure must be buried
in the snow or resting on it.
Le Gall and her team are now
modelling possible surface features
that could be responsible, including
a layer of snowballs or huge ice
spikes. “It’s actually quite important
for future missions that might land
on these moons,” says Le Gall. If we
want to go there, we need to know
what the terrain is like. ❚A snowball fight
is raging between
Saturn’s moons