This is not news, it is not journalism and it is not even true. This is propaganda:
More than 1m tonnes of soya used by UK livestock farmers to produce chicken and other food last year could be linked to deforestation, according to a new analysis.
Large areas of forest in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay are being cleared to produce soya, which is then exported to the UK to be used by farmers, mainly to feed chickens and dairy cows.
Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has surged to a 12-year high with an area seven times larger than Greater London destroyed over the past year, according to figures released this week.
None of this is with respect to the Amazon or Amazonia, nor even rain forest. One good reason being that you don’t grow soya on ex-rainforest land, it doesn’t work.
They are, by conflating the two points, soya and the Amazon, lying to us all. As we’ve pointed out a few days back:
The Cerrado is not the Amazon. “Woody tropical savannah” means grassland with the occasional stand or clump of small trees. In terms of girt big trees it’s less forested than Gloucestershire.
Do look also at their claim. That an area about half the size of western Europe cannot, should not, be used to grow food. 2 million square kilometres is that Cerrado and they’re complaining that 800 square kilometres has been cleared (much more has, but their actual complaint here is about the 800). 0.04% that is. And 25% of the place is protected anyway.
No, really, think about this. Someone’s farming the area between, say, Farrington Gurney and Market Lavington and this really must stop because we’ve only the rest of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain to go.
They are, in effect, lying. They want to stop the international trade in food because localism. They know that the Amazon thing is fixed in our minds. So, they conflate the two.
We really should’t be allowing such lying pustules to be determining public policy, should we?
Your plate full of chicken is destroying Earth’s rainforest lungs! A claim so alluring that no one can be bothered to dig out the facts. Did you know the President wants us to drink bleach? Did you know Imperial College said 2.2 million Americans will die of Covid? (Trump did not question this but rounded it up to 3 million to tout himself as a crisis manager.) There are lies everywhere, and we have so many other, more productive interests as to not take the time to see through them.
Why, the very existence of you is destroying our Gaia in more than one way. So, you know, you should stop doing that. Existing that is.
Ha! Report that to any of the ‘fact-checking’ sites and see what kind of a response you get…
I suspect that if they were just more honest and put out a slogan of “Keep Paraguay Poor” that they’d probably get the same amount of support. There’s a lot of people who buy into the idea that “my life will be diminished if we let you live like me”.
I thought the main purpose of growing soybean was to make tofu to feed Vegans. Do they know they’re destroying the rain forest? 🙂
No. They’re not destroying the rain forest by destroying the rain forest. You’re destroying the rain forest by not destroying the rain forest.
So you’re wicked. All clear now?