Greenpeace
is targeting European McDonald's as a catalyst for the destruction of the rain forest half a world away. According
to a report entitled "Eating up the
Amazon," the eco-watchdog organization says that the
soybeans that European fast food restaurants use to feed their chickens are grown in illegally deforested areas of
the rain forest.
In Brazil, soybean farming has become so profitable that ranchers are selling off their now-valuable pasture land to farmers. The reason that this is illegal, says the group, is that there are regulations in Brazil that require landowners to keep 80 percent of their land forested. Once the ranchers have sold their cleared pasture land, they simply clear new land. Selling of chunks of their property means that they are keeping themselves under the 80 percent margin set by the government, but it does mean that the rain forest is getting smaller. There is also talk of ranchers and farmers using near-slave labor to harvest and tend the crops and an insinuation that the fast food companies might be simply turning away from the problem, if not outright promoting it.
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