BRAZIL: Irish producers fear that the spectacular rise of Brazilian beef is a threat to their livelihoods, writes Tom Hennigan in São Paulo
Having warned for some time that Brazilian beef imports risked also importing foot-and-mouth disease into Ireland, Irish farmers must be tempted to say "told you so" after an outbreak in a supposedly disease-free region of Brazil earlier this month.
First detected in the supposedly vaccinated state of Mato Grosso do Sul on October 10th the outbreak has led to a partial ban on Brazilian imports into the EU and highlights what Irish farmers say is the lax traceability and control measures in place in Brazil, which they claim warrant a total ban on Brazilian beef imports.
Until the foot-and-mouth outbreak Irish farmers had sought to highlight what they say is the Brazilian beef industry's appalling environmental and social impact as part of their campaign against Brazil's booming beef exports. These, they say, have come from nowhere in a decade to threaten the survival of the Irish industry.
Campaigning under slogans such as "What about the rainforest?", Irish farmers have lined up with Brazilian environmentalists in their bitter battle with the country's powerful agricultural sector over the fate of the Amazon jungle.
Certain facts seem to support the farmers' claim that the rise of Brazil's beef industry has been at the Amazon's expense. A World Bank report last year estimated that cattle ranching occupied 75 per cent of deforested areas of the Amazon, a fifth of which has already disappeared.
While Brazil's agriculture sector has been experiencing explosive growth the rate at which its rainforest is being cut down has accelerated rapidly.
But Brazil's beef industry categorically rejects claims that it is responsible for the Amazon's destruction. "In no way do we accept these accusations. Today the Brazilian producer, especially in livestock, is very conscious of the necessity of looking after the environment. The threat against the Amazon is not from ranchers but loggers," says Antenor Nogueira, president of Brazil's National Confederation of Agriculture livestock forum.
Environmentalists concede the role of loggers but say cattle - Brazilian and those in other parts of the world - play a crucial role in the assault on the Amazon.
"Today there is a triple alliance between logging, ranching and soy," says Paulo Adário, Greenpeace's Amazon campaign co-ordinator. "Loggers are the door openers. They open roads searching for valuable trees then when they leave they leave behind the roads and these invite in cattle farmers."
After ranchers have cleared land opened by loggers the soy farmers arrive. Soy fetches higher prices than beef and with multinational agri-businesses such as Cargill pouring money into Brazil's soy industry, its farmers have the cash to buy land from ranchers. "They buy out the cattle farmers and push them into the forest," says Mr Adário.
This rapidly expanding soy industry on Brazil's agricultural frontier is largely due to Chinese demand, but the boom is also driven by European farmers who have replaced the animal feed that resulted in BSE, or mad cow disease, with safer soy-based feed. Greenpeace estimates that six million Brazilian hectares planted with soy go to feed European herds.
Many in Brazil's farming community are annoyed at international pressure to deny what they see as their right to exploit a natural resource. "The majority of countries criticising Brazil for deforestation here are countries that have already chopped down their forests," says Antonio Jorge Camardelli, executive director of the Brazilian beef exporters association, Abiec.
Abiec says beef exports from the Amazon region are negligible, especially as the region is not yet free of foot-and-mouth disease.
Instead exports come from states further south, which until the current outbreak had been certified foot-and-mouth free.
But environmentalists say Amazon beef is supplying the domestic market, liberating beef from (until recently) foot-and-mouth free areas for export.
When in opposition Brazil's president, Lula da Silva championed the environment. But the country's reliance on the hard currency earned by farming exports to help service its massive debts means his government has sought to sustain the agri-business sector since taking office in 2003. The result has been to alienate some of Lula's oldest supporters in the countryside.
The country's largest landless peasant movement, the MST, says the government has done little to fulfil its promise to reform the country's land ownership - 1 per cent of Brazil's population owns half of the country's agricultural land and millions have to scrape a living as migrant or day labourers.
"We are 200 years behind Europe on agrarian reform. We are fighting here for a reform that other societies did long ago and which were fundamental to the development of those societies," says Valdir Misnerovicz, an MST leader in the agricultural state of Goiás.
"Strengthening the current model of production - exports by large agri-businesses - is strengthening a model of social exclusion and environmental destruction." But the government insists the agricultural sector is increasingly ready to do its bit for the environment.
"Today the Amazon's export sector has a higher environmental awareness because the European and American consumer is more demanding and this helps," says Dr Gilney Viana, political secretary for sustainable development at Brazil's environment ministry.
Given the absence of government on much of Brazil's agricultural frontier Dr Viana says the way ahead is working with ranchers and soy farmers: "We don't want to say to them 'no soy' or 'no cattle' but that they do it within areas sanctioned by law and avoid areas important for preserving biodiversity."
While last year was one of the worst on record for the rainforest the government says preliminary data shows a steep fall in the deforestation rate for this year. But environmentalists still worry about the future.
As Mr Adário says: "Brazil's agri-business sector is very modern, very aggressive and it has access to cheap money, cheap labour and the world's only growing agricultural frontier at a time of unprecedented foreign demand for its products."