Posted on 06/06/2012 10:27:12 PM PDT by Hunton Peck
SAO PAULO (AP) -- Greenpeace on Wednesday accused JBS, the world's largest meatpacker, of not honoring a 2009 agreement in which the Brazilian company pledged to protect the Amazon rainforest by not buying cattle from suppliers who raise beef on illegally deforested land.
JBS denied the claim and said it would take legal action against Greenpeace, saying the environmental group's report could potentially cause a loss in sales. JBS didn't indicate what sort of damages it might seek.
Greenpeace said it based its accusations on observations made by its own field investigators and on information obtained in reports from Ibama, Brazil's environmental protection agency.
"In researching JBS's business practices, Greenpeace has found, once again, numerous new cases of JBS purchasing cattle directly and indirectly from farms involved in illegal deforestation, invasion of protected areas and indigenous lands, and also of farms using slave labor," the group said in a statement.
JBS rejected those accusations out of hand.
"The information mentioning JBS in the report are false, misleading, incorrect, and lead society to make wrong judgments," the company said in an emailed statement. "For this reason the company will take judicial action against Greenpeace and search for all legal means to obtain compensation for material damages."
After hours calls to Ibama were not returned.
The Greenpeace report comes just two weeks before the United Nations' Rio+20 sustainable development conference, where preserving the Amazon will be a big topic.
In 2009, JBS SA and three of Brazil's other major meatpackers and leather...
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
(BTW, if you read beyond the excerpt, it looks like Greenpeace has arrogated to itself a sort of quasi-governmental regulatory authority over the economies of developing countries.)
We, on the other hand, do what we can to keep Amazon healthy.
We buy a few books each month, saw blades, vacuum parts, blender parts, and on and on.
Why drive the miles and walk into a store when Amazon ships to the house?
Capitalism is good for Amazon. Collectivism, or even radical environmentalism(both the same thing, of course) are bad for Amazon.
Me too. I’ve probably paid for a couple years of Jeff Bezos’ health coverage all by myself...
I’m glad to see a company fight back.
For too long, I’ve seen leftist groups target companies, and the response is to roll over, apologize, and try to do better in the future.
“We, on the other hand, do what we can to keep Amazon healthy. We buy a few books each month, saw blades, vacuum parts, blender parts, and on and on.”
This is about the Amazon river, silly :P
OTOH, I've flown over the Amazon and even 20 years ago, I still have vivid images in my mind of watching huge swaths of forest being burned out and cleared. If progress continued at that pace, it's very disturbing to imagine what would be left.
Just my perspective from first hand observation.
When I saw the headline my first thought was that it referred to the online bookseller Amazon.com.
Only if USDA or Amazon Prime.
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