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Brazil's Amazon: Does boycotting meat products from deforested land help?

Meat products like corned beef and beef jerky are popular in many parts of the world, and a lot of them come from Brazil. Concerns have been voiced for years about the scale of cattle-rearing for meat production on land that's been illegally cleared in the Amazon rainforest. Now, several large European supermarket chains have said they will stop selling any beef products from Brazil.

Dr Ane Alencar, from the Amazonian Environmental Research Institute in Brazil, outlines the scale of the problem. He says there has been a 50% increase in deforestation under the government of Jair Bolsonaro and that much of the deforestation is taking place in national parks and the land of indigenous communities. He welcomes the boycott, but says it probably won't make much difference to deforestation in the long run, and may even harm the businesses of legitimate farmers.

Photo: Cows in the Roraima area of the Amazon, north Brazil Credit: Getty Images

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3 minutes