Cargill at loggerheads with Greenpeace over soy
its soy production facilities in Brazil's Amazon basin with
Greenpeace, after a co-ordinated activist attack caused mayhem at
three Cargill International sites.
In Surrey, England, Greenpeace dumped nearly four tonnes of soy at the entrance of Cargill's European headquarters on Monday, and several protestors chained themselves to a gate to prevent 300 employees gaining access to the site.
The action formed part of a synchronised attack on various Cargill facilities across the world and follows the publication of a damning Greenpeace report allegedly revealing the American firm's underhand soy production practices in the Amazon rainforest.
Also on Monday 18 activists in Orléans, France, closed down a Cargill-owned Sun Valley factory where many millions of chickens are reared for the retail and food service sectors across Europe - supplying household names such as Tesco, Albert Heijn and KFC.
Greenpeace claims the poultry are fed on soy grown illegally in Brazil's Amazon basin, a practice which is accelerating the destruction of the rainforest.
Over the weekend Greenpeace protestors at the Santarem export facility in Brazil's Para state managed to storm the site, but several people were arrested by local police.
Cargill Europe's Francis Derosa told FoodandDrinkEurope.com that senior management in Surrey spoke with Greenpeace members on Monday and has agreed to officially meet the group within the next two weeks.
"During the protests management had discussions with the protestors, and there have been ongoing talks between Cargill and Greenpeace about responsible soya development in the Amazon region," he confirmed.
Greenpeace launched its attack on the world's largest privately-owned business this April after 12 months of research into Cargill's export facility in the Amazonian port of Santarem and a dozen storage facilities in the grasslands of the Cerrado and the Amazonian biome in Mata Grasso.
The group published a report entitled Eating up the Amazon in which it claims the processing plant at Santarem not only accepts soy grown illegally on protected lands, but also flaunted local development regulations by failing to produce an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report prior to building.
Cargill is now subject to an official inquiry in the Brazilian courts, but insists the allegations are untrue.
"Cargill followed all the permitting requirements of the applicable governmental agencies for the construction and operation of the Santarem facility," the firm said in a statement.
"As part of the permit process, we commissioned third party experts to conduct a full environmental impact assessment. There is an ongoing court case concerning whether we should have done a particular type of Environmental Impact Assessment before construction, even though it was not required by the government. We will, of course, abide by the decision of the courts, when it is final."
The worldwide environmental group, with a communications network easily matching that of a multinational company, is also claiming Cargill is involved in slave labour, and is responsible for destroying lands belonging to indigenous peoples.
The latest high-profile protests highlight the growing ingenuity of pressure groups to bring attention to multinational agricultural organisations operating in sensitive ecological areas.
Cargill has announced that, starting from the next crop, it will only purchase soy from producers who are compliant with the regional Forest Code or those "actively working towards compliance."
The firm is eager to point out its policy in Santarem is consistent with its commitment to responsible economic development around the world.
"Our investment creates economic opportunity to help promote the wellbeing of communities and responsible environmental management," it added.
Soy has become a major source of vegetable oil and protein, satisfying the ever-growing need of a mushrooming world population and plugging rising demand for animal feed.
Brazil has seen substantial expansion in this sector in recent years, driven by domestic growth and the opening up of the Chinese economy.
It has become the second largest soybean producer, after the US, providing more than 30 per cent of the world's crop - an estimated 57.4m tonnes in the 2005-06 period alone.
Greenpeace claims that last year more than 25,000 sq kilometres (10,000 sq miles) of Amazon forest were felled, largely for soy farming.
