Rainforest Destruction and Beef Consumption

Rainforest Destruction and Beef Consumption

By Stirling Cousins

Many of us have heard the quote: For every quarter-pound hamburger made from rainforest beef, 55 square feet of rainforest are destroyed. What does this really mean?

Tropical rainforests are amazing places. They are complex ecosystems that survive due to the interactions of the species that live there. The forests have evolved along with the living beings in them. Most of the plants, animals and fungi that live in rainforests can’t survive anywhere else. Rainforests are so diverse that most of the species only live in a limited area. If that area is destroyed, that species is gone forever. So if 55 square feet of rainforest are destroyed, it isn’t just a piece of land that is lost – 165 pounds of plant and animal species are destroyed including 20 to 30 species of plants, 100 species of insects, and dozens of species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. Some of these loses may contribute to the extinction of that species. We are losing the biodiversity – the vast numbers of species that make up our planet – with the destruction of the forest. Now imagine a family of four going out to McDonalds for dinner. An area the size of a living room destroyed for one meal. Six hundred and sixty pounds of life killed to produce one pound of food for humans.

Why are rainforests used to raise cattle for beef? Basically because the land is cheap and poor countries are willing to sell it. Companies move in and clear the rainforest. They do this using a technique called slash and burn agriculture. Some native people use this technique on very small parcels of land. They cut the forest down and burn it and the nutrients from the forest go into the soil. They can use the land for a season or two before the nutrients are depleted and they move on to a new area. On a very small scale this is sustainable. The forest regrows from the forest surrounding it. On a large scale, this type of forestry practice is devastating. Large tracts of land are burned and grasses are grown on what is now pasture. Then cattle graze on the land. After only a couple years the nutrients are so depleted and the soil is so compacted from grazing that the land is no longer valuable even for this very low end purpose. Unfortunately in this case, the forest cannot regrow. There is no surrounding forest to replant and repopulate the land. The land has been significantly damaged from growing only grasses and from having cattle trample it. The nutrients have also been lost from the soil. The nutrients in rainforests are all held within the plants and animals themselves. When the rainforest burns these nutrients go into the soil. Then they go into the plants that the cattle eat. The cattle are then removed from the land and killed, thus removing the nutrients from the land. Soil erosion is also great when the forest is gone, further increasing the rate of nutrient loss. Flooding in areas where forests have been destroyed is also much more frequent, because the plants are not there to help absorb the water and because the soil has been compacted by the cattle. Floods can cause enormous amounts of damage to the remaining forest and to the people who live in the area.

The burning of forests also has effects on global warming, thus affecting the rest of the planet. The fires in tropical rainforests have released billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is a "greenhouse gas" which traps the sun’s energy and contributes to global warming. Pictures taken from satellites show that there are many fires burning in rainforests all the time.

Since 1960 more than 25% of Central American rainforests have been lost for beef production – most of the beef being exported to the United States and Europe. Brazil has lost 38% of its rainforest to cattle ranching. The losses are astonishing.

When it comes to rainforests, beef is the meat that is the culprit – and only some of American beef comes from rainforests. If you want to avoid implication in rainforest destruction, you have to avoid eating all beef, since the origins of meat are not labeled. To protect all land and biodiversity, become a vegan. It takes fifteen times as much land to produce food for a meat eater than it does to produce food for a vegan.