Soybeans are produced on a large scale to be used as a protein source in animal feed for meat and dairy production. A whopping 76% of the world’s soy is used to feed farmed animals and 28% of this is fed directly to pigs. Almost 90% of soy imports in the UK goes to feeding chickens in intensive units and pigs on large-scale holdings. It takes a lot of land to produce soy to feed the staggering amount of animals farmed globally: 131 million hectares – about one third the size of the European Union are estimated to be used to grow soya globally. (1)

Most of the deforestation for animal agriculture occurs in South America: in the Amazon, dry woodland biomes such as the Gran Chaco – South America’s second-largest forest – and the Brazilian Cerrado. A ‘soy moratorium’ was agreed by soya traders in 2006 to avoid sourcing from destroyed areas in the Brazilian Amazon. The rapid expansion of the soya industry, however, continued at the expense of deforestation elsewhere in some of the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth, and is also linked to human rights abuses. (1)

Highway BR-163, one of the main roads cutting through the heart of the Amazon rainforest, links Brazil’s largest soybean producing state to Cargill’s soya export terminal in Santarém. In 2021, 5.9 million tonnes of soy were handled at Santarém port. (2)

Brazilian meat giant JBS is the world’s largest meat company and plans to further expand. JBS is known for driving forest destruction in places like the Amazon and other climate critical ecosystems in South America. JBS has regularly been associated with land-grabbing, deforestation and encroachment on Indigenous lands.

JBS S.A. controls Pilgrim’s UK, the leading pork producer in the UK, and provides consumers with nearly 7 million 4 oz. pig meat servings daily. (3)

Cargill is the largest direct importer of Brazilian soya to the UK and the biggest private company in the United States. They are the third largest meat processor worldwide and the third largest greenhouse gas emitter of all global livestock companies. (4) In 2023, Cargill made $177 billion in revenue –the highest ever for the 158-year-old company. (5)

Cargill’s supply chain has been repeatedly linked with deforestation for soya in climate and nature critical ecosystems in South America. (2)

Between 2015 and 2020, more than 2,500 investment firms, banks, and pension funds backed global meat and dairy companies to the tune of $478 billion. British high street banks like Barclays and HSBC have provided billions in loans to the industry. (6) During those years, Barclays was the largest financier of JBS, the biggest cog in the destructive industrial meat sector. Barclays provided JBS with £4.8 billion in corporate loans, bond issuances and revolving credit facilities. (7)

JBS is planning to list shares on the New York Stock Exchange, which would give the company access to more money to further expand. (8)

The UK imports around 3 million tonnes of soya each year to feed pigs and other industrially farmed animals, like chickens and dairy cows. Two thirds of UK soya imports come from countries in South America, where its expansion drives deforestation and human rights abuses. (1)

The Liverpool Docks is the main gateway for soya entering the UK via Cargill, a major industrial supplier of commodities for animal feed.

The UK government has failed to ban imports of products linked to deforestation and degradation of forest and vital ecosystems. Despite promises at COP26 in Glasgow, the Environment Act 2021 –which bans imports of products linked to illegal deforestation –has not even come into force yet. Billions of pounds from UK finance are bankrolling the destruction of nature and livelihoods abroad.

The Government also failed to adopt measures to reduce meat and dairy production and consumption in its Food Strategy published in June 2022. While over 10 million tonnes of food go to waste annually, the government maintains rules in place that prevent the feeding of livestock on food waste - unnecessarily maintaining the dependency on soya and animal feed imports. (9)

The 3 largest pig meat processors in the UK are:

Cranswick PLC, who reportedly slaughter around 50,000 pigs per week. (10)

The Karro Food Group, who claim to slaughter 45,000 pigs per week. (10)

Pilgrim’s UK, controlled by JBS S.A., who say they provide consumers with nearly 7,000,000 daily servings of 4 ounces of pig meat. (3)

Ten corporate companies account for 35% of the breeding sows (female pigs). (10) Around 10 million pigs in the UK are bred each year for food, from around 400,000 breeding sows). (11) In 2017, there were about 10,000 pig farms in the UK but around 90% of production came from about 1,000 assured farms. That means that the food these farms produced met a specific set of independently certified standards at each stage of production.

Modern sows have an average of 14.2 piglets born alive per litter. (12) In comparison, wild pigs have 3 to 4 piglets per year. (13) Sows are slaughtered at the end of their production period, at 1-1.5 years old, having had an average of 3 to 5 litters. (14)

Domestic production of pork in England covers 40% of domestic consumption, while imports for cheaper industrial pig meat, mostly from Denmark, are on the rise. (11,15) The biggest pork producer in Europe is Danish Crown, who will be opening up its first new processing facility in Rochdale in Greater Manchester. To be able to offer a lower price point than British producers, the facility will be solely supplied with imported Danish pork. (1)

Danish Crown has a history of spreading false claims about the climate impact of industrial meat by telling consumers that “Danish pig is more climate-friendly than you think”. (16) They based this claim off a 2019 report from Aarhus University about the climate footprint of pork –which Danish Crown co-authored. (17)

Tesco is the UK’s worst supermarket for forest destruction and they are fuelling fires in forests across Brazil. They have acknowledged that a reduction in meat and dairy is necessary to meet their climate targets, yet continue to buy British pork and chicken from suppliers owned by notorious Amazon rainforest-destroyer, JBS. (18)

Tesco’s reported operating profits for 2022/23 were £2.6 billion. (19)

They have failed to deliver on their promise to phase out deforestation by 2020. Instead, Tesco says that by 2025, it plans to know where their soya comes from. (20)

In 2021, each British citizen consumed an average of 21.1kg of pork, equivalent to 1400 rashers of bacon. (21)

Pig products available in supermarkets include steaks, meat for roasting, gammon, sous vide, pork chops, pork belly, pork ribs, bacon, burgers & grills, sausages, mince and sliced cooked meats.

It is estimated that 90% of pork in UK supermarkets could be fuelling deforestation due to a lack of transparency in soy supply chains. (22)