By Manuela Andreoni and Ana Mano
SAO PAULO, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Environmental groups are skeptical about whether grain traders that supply livestock feed to global meat markets will keep pledges to avoid buying crops grown on recently deforested lands in Brazil, after a two-decade corporate pact to protect the Amazon rainforest unraveled this month.
Global grains traders abandoned the Amazon Soy Moratorium after local lawmakers in Brazil's largest agricultural state Mato Grosso threatened to strip tax
incentives from those who honored commitments to avoid buying soy from farmers who razed rainforest acres to grow crops.
The news came just as new commitments from grain traders to end all deforestation in their supply chains were expected to take effect. This would have amplified protections to other threatened ecosystems such as the Cerrado grasslands and Pantanal wetlands, which suffered immense tree loss in recent decades.
Trading companies adopted the Soy Moratorium in 2006 after years of campaigning by environmental groups. The pact had allowed the traders to share data on deforestation within their supply chain with each other and with civil society groups such as environmentalists monitoring impact.
Environmentalists had been campaigning for a wider corporate pledge for a decade. Brazil still loses hundreds of thousands of acres of native vegetation to soy every year.
Since 2021, U.S.-based ADM, Bunge and Cargill, Europe's Louis Dreyfus, Brazil's Amaggi and China's COFCO had made commitments to end all deforestation in their supply chains, beginning in 2025-2026.
The moratorium that unraveled this month had barred traders from buying soybeans from farmers who razed forests after 2008. The pact collapsed as deadlines for new pledges neared. New commitments allow purchases from farms on land cleared up to between 2020 and 2025, depending on the trading firm. ADM, Bunge, Cargill, LDC and Amaggi did not respond to questions about their anti-deforestation commitments.
This means current systems to track new commitments lack the openness and collaboration that, according to researchers, enabled the pact and other conservation measures to preserve an Ireland-sized area of the Amazon rainforest.
Much of Brazil's soy is used as feed to fatten animals for meat sold by supermarkets and fast-food chains such as McDonald's. Groups representing these big customers have been vague about how strictly they will monitor whether the meat they purchase came from animals fed with soy from cleared rainforest.
"The heart of the issue is transparency and verification paths, meaning a statement is not enough," said Andre Lima, who leads efforts to fight deforestation in Brazil's Environment Ministry. "Commitments that come with transparency and reporting, verification and measuring mechanisms certainly have a positive result," he added.
COFCO said a third-party auditor has verified that 99% of the soybeans it buys in Brazil are deforestation-free since 2024. COFCO said its internal controls classify grains purchased from recently deforested areas as "higher emitting".
Glenn Hurowitz, CEO of environmental watchdog Mighty Earth, said he was glad to see companies commit to protect all ecosystems, but was concerned about compliance.
"It just seems weird to be adopting stronger nature protections at the same time that you're abandoning a proven and effective mechanism to save the Amazon," he said. "They're gutting the very mechanism that has underpinned all their claims to environmental responsibility."
'TOXIC REPUTATION'
The moratorium was adopted in 2006, when Greenpeace released a report showing soy sold by grain traders had driven deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.
Days after large grain traders withdrew from the pact, global restaurant chains, food retailers and FEFAC, a powerful animal feed lobby in Europe, where nearly half of Brazil's soymeal is exported, avoided public comments or remained vague about taking any action.
The British Retail Consortium, which represents McDonald's and Burger King, expressed disappointment and said retailers remained committed to collaborating with their suppliers to tackle deforestation but gave no details.
In September, the Retail Soy Group, representing supermarket chains such as Tesco and Sainsbury, published a public letter urging traders to keep commitments in line with the Soy Moratorium. It said its members would "evaluate eachcompany's performance individually against our own individual procurement policies".
Will Schreiber, a representative for the group, said the exit of major traders from what was considered "the most successful conservation measure of this century in preventing new forest loss" was "very disappointing."
Still, he added, when he met with representatives from grain traders last year, "the sentiment was very much that the soy manifesto was right for its time."
In recent years, Brazil has stepped up legal protections for its forests. Europe is scheduled to adopt legislation this year barring imports linked to deforestation since 2020.
China is by far the biggest buyer of Brazilian soy and other farm goods, yet exports to Europe may grow under the recently cemented trade agreement between South American trade bloc Mercosur and the European Union.
"I think that it'll be perfectly possible for those major traders to maintain their commitments with the monitoring systems that they have in place," Schreiber said.
Hurowitz, the campaigner, said he was skeptical that retailers would make an impact without reducing purchases from traders that abandoned the moratorium.
"Cargill and Bunge understand dollars and cents," he said. "I don't know yet the extent to which consumers are aware of the fact that these obscure-animal-feed traders have abandoned the Amazon. But we certainly intend to make sure they do know."
(Reporting by Manuela Andreoni and Ana Mano in Sao PauloEditing by Brad Haynes and David Gregorio)
