Chicken Supply Chains Across Europe Linked to Indigenous Rights Abuses, Investigation Reveals

EAT

Jul 13

Leading supermarkets, fast food outlets, and pet food companies are buying chickens fed with soy produced on a 23,000-acre farm built on Indigenous ancestral land, from which communities were violently displaced.

Some of Europe’s largest supermarket chains, pet food producers, and restaurants have been implicated in human rights abuses and Indigenous land theft in Brazil.

The major international companies’ chicken production supply chain has been traced back to Brasilia do Sul, a 23,000-acre soy farm in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, built on Guarani Kaiowá land, a report by non-profit Earthsight and agribusiness watch group De Olho nos Ruralistas has revealed.

The Guarani Kaiowá people were forcibly evicted from their ancestral land in Takuara in the 1950s to make way for agribusiness expansion. Over the years, the indigenous group’s attempts to regain the territory they had called home for generations were “brutally suppressed,” says the report, “including through violent evictions and the aggressive use of the courts to stymie them.”

The group established a camp on a small area of the land in 1999 and since this time have peacefully resisted repeated legal efforts to remove them. In 2003, their leader, Marcos Veron, was killed during a violent struggle, after armed men stormed the camp. A Brazilian court later found three men guilty of kidnap, torture, and criminal conspiracy relating to his death, but were ultimately cleared of Veron's murder. On these lesser charges, the men had the right to appeal after each serving just four years in prison. The three men were allegedly working for the owner of the ranch.

“When we’re not struck by gunmen we’re struck by the courts,” said Valdelice Veron, a Guarani Kaiowá leader and Marcos’ daughter. “The aim of Brazil’s rulers is the extermination of our people. My message to you watching our situation in Mato Grosso do Sul and in Brazil is that you rise up with us.”

Takuara was sold in 1966 to cattle rancher Jacintho Honório da Silva Filho and renamed Brasília do Sul in 1979. By the 1990s, the land was relentlessly deforested to make way for up to 10,000 cows. Today, Brasília do Sul dominates that land, producing soy that is sold to huge cooperatives and traders, including Lar Cooperativa Agroindustrial, Brazil’s fourth-biggest producer of poultry, which uses the soy to feed its chickens. The poultry giant, which exports chicken to over 80 countries, expects to double its chicken production by 2024.

The entrance sign for Brasília do Sul bears the name of the late cattle baron Jacintho Honório da Silva Filho, who bought the land in 1966. Credit: Earthsight / De Olho nos Ruralistas

The report, There Will Be Blood: The Ugly Truth Behind Cheap Chicken, details how Lar exported 117,000 tonnes of frozen and marinated chicken products to the EU and UK, with exports in 2021 nearly three times as high as those in 2017. LAR's main export markets in the region are Germany (42 percent), the UK (36 percent), and the Netherlands (15 percent).

British poultry supplier, Westbridge Foods bought, nearly 38,000 tonnes of chicken from LARs between 2018 and 2021 to supply some of the country's largest retailers and restaurant chains, including Sainsbury's, Asda, Aldi, Iceland, and KFC. Meanwhile, the German firm Paulsen Food bought over 14,000 tonnes of chicken products from LAR from 2017 to 2021 to manufacture dog and cat food.

“Not a single importer, manufacturer or retailer mentioned in our report was able to convincingly explain how they are able to stop chicken products linked to indigenous rights violations from entering their supply chains,” said Rubens Carvalho, Earthsight’s head of deforestation research.

“On the contrary, their responses indicate they have a long way to go before their consumers can be confident they are not contributing to environmental or social harm overseas.

“These findings reinforce the need for new UK regulations aimed at preventing the import of goods linked to illegal deforestation to include strong provisions on indigenous land rights, and to cover a variety of commodities and derived products, such as soy and chicken.”

Since 2020 Brazil has been the world's largest chicken meat exporter and second-largest producer. In January 2022, the EU increased its imports of Brazilian chicken meat by 53.5 percent compared to the same month last year. Huge quantities of soy are needed to feed and raise animals for food. In fact, more than three-quarters (77 percent) of global soy is fed to the animals raised for meat and dairy production, having devastating impacts on the natural world and communities.

While the owners of Brasília do Sul continue to make vast fortunes through the worldwide export of meat, many of the Guarani Kaiowá have been living on the side of a highway.

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