Britain’s ‘addiction’ to chicken is ‘driving’ deforestation in Brazil, a new report says.

The investigation was conducted by several media companies such as  ITV News, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Greenpeace, and The Guardian

It found supermarkets such as Tesco, Asda, and Lidl are selling chicken fed on soya beans, that have been imported from the Cerrado. The supermarkets, along with fast-food brands McDonald’s and Nando’s, source the feed from food giant Cargill.

The Cerrado 

The Cerrado, also known as Brazil’s ‘second Amazon’, is a two million square km stretch of land. Only half of the original habitat remains. Most of the land has since been cleared to grow soy for animal agriculture.

ITV says an estimated ‘100,000 tonnes of soybeans arrive at its terminal in Liverpool each year’ from the Cerrado region.

‘Enormously damaging’

Chris Packham is an environmentalist and T.V broadcaster. He told ITV News: “Most people would be incredulous when they think they’re buying a piece of chicken in Tesco which has been fed on a crop responsible for one of the largest wholesale tropical forest destructions in recent times. 

“We’ve got to wake up to the fact that what we buy in U.K supermarkets, the implications of that purchase can be far and wide and enormously damaging. This is a prime example of that.”

However, according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Cargill said it broke no rules. It also said it ‘does not source from illegally deforested land’. 

You can read the full report here