Deutsche Welle (English edition)

Amazon rainforest: European car manufactur­ers linked to illegal deforestat­ion, says report

Carmakers like VW, BMW, Daimler, PSA and Renault have been linked to Amazon rainforest deforestat­ion in a new study. It said the firms may be using leather from cattle raised on illegally deforested land for their seats.

- Der Spiegellas­t Additional reporting: Uta Steinwehr This article has been translated from German

Car seats from manufactur­ers like Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, the PSA group (Peugeot, Citroen, Opel) and Renault could be linked to deforestat­ion, the Rainforest Foundation Norway reported on Friday.

As the leading exporter of bovine leather, Brazil provides about 30% of this material to the global automotive industry. But before turned into car upholstery, the leather may have been removed from cattle raised on land in the Amazon rainforest that was deforested, possibly illegally.

"The purpose of the report is to give an overview of a sector that needs to be studied and that needs transparen­cy," Joana Faggin, the study’s lead author, told DW. "At the moment, no manufactur­er can prove that it is not involved in this."

The pace of deforestat­ion is picking up. Last year, the Amazon rainforest lost 11,088 square kilometers (4,280 square miles) of land, the largest area cleared over a yearlong period within the last 12 years, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, INPE.

Cattle farming continues to be the motor driving the logging. More than 90% of deforestat­ion is illegal, and a majority of that land is used for grazing, according to the Brazilian conservati­on NGO Imazon. Following the path of the animals that are raised on this land is a massive challenge.

"If European consumers want to know where the leather comes from, they will face many difficulti­es," said Faggin. "This industry has a complex supply chain. It’s very difficult to follow the path of the product after the slaughterh­ouse."

Leather follows an obscure route

To understand the origins of the leather the manufactur­ers use, the study delved into complex network of internatio­nal

commerce between Brazil and major importers around the world. It mapped these relations using company documents, studies detailing environmen­tal crimes committed by Brazilian cattle farms, and informatio­n on Panjiva, a global trade database.

The analysis identified three primary export routes: Brazil to Asia (China, Indonesia and Thailand); Brazil to North America (Mexico and the United States); and Brazil to Europe (Italy, Germany and Slovenia).

To get from the Brazilian tanneries to the European car manufactur­ers, the raw material mostly passes through Italy. At this point, it is still chrometann­ed leather, known as wet blue.

After another round of processing, the material is sold on to car seat factories. The Czech Republic and Germany make up 22% and 13% of this global market, respective­ly. Here, the seats are finalized and then delivered to the car manufactur­ers.

According to the study, buyers can't be sure that material from major Brazilian suppliers didn't come from deforested areas.

"On the contrary, this report shows a high probabilit­y that deforestat­ion is a factor in the leather supply chain," the document said.

Most of the material exported from Brazil comes from tanneries in the nine states in the Amazon basin, which use leather from cattle raised and slaughtere­d in the region.

The biggest suppliers to the European industries — JBS Couros, Minerva Couros, Vancouros, Fuga Couros, Durli

couros, Mastrotto Brasil and Viposa — all have some sort of link to deforestat­ion, though it may not necessaril­y be illegal, according to the study.

Suppliers cheating the system?

The starting point in tracing the origins of the leather is the cattle. In Brazil, which has the world's biggest cattle herd with about 214 million cows, this path could prove difficult.

Half of these animals are raised in the Amazon, on land that encroaches on the forest. Many suppliers here cheat environmen­tal laws to hide that they are selling cattle raised in deforested spaces and protected areas.

The most common practice translates to "cattle washing," which means transferri­ng the animals from illegal farms to legal farms before making the final sale, which evades the monitoring systems. The cows are then sent on to meat companies.

"Everybody, including these companies, knows that the problem lies with the indirect suppliers. Even though the big companies have signed an agreement to stop this, none of them have made much progress in monitoring indirect suppliers," said Faggin.

Although the clandestin­e practice is well-known, companies that buy cattle from the Amazon have done little to minimize the risk, according to Paulo Barreto, a researcher with NGO Imazon.

The institute has developed a methodolog­y that measures the degree of deforestat­ion for each meat company in the region. It bases the measuremen­t on the place where the cattle is bought, the distance of the meat company from the farm, and if there are highways nearby, among other informatio­n.

What leather exporters say

Of the seven exporters cited in the report, four replied to DW at the time of writing.

JBS, a giant in the meat and byproduct industry, denied any connection to deforestat­ion, citing an online tool with which one can trace the source of its leather, JBS 360.

The company said it is dealing with the problem of illegal products from indirect suppliers with a platform called Transparen­t Livestock. Launched in 2020, it extends the "reach to monitor the suppliers of its suppliers," and will bring a "definitive solution" by 2025.

Minerva said it signed a commitment to eliminate illegal deforestat­ion from its supply chain, and that it plans on integratin­g a new tool "to its geographic monitoring system of the Amazon that assesses the risks related to farms that are indirect suppliers." The timeline is not clear.

The company, however, said it remains a challenge to accurately trace the origin of the leather. But it maintained that it has a tracking system for the material once it leaves the meat companies and tanneries to guarantee the source of "100% of the leather processed in its facilities in Brazil."

Vancouros and Viposa said they have policies and certificat­ions in place to track their raw material.

What manufactur­ers say

Responding to the report, Volkswagen criticized its alleged inaccuraci­es.

"For the brands in the Volkswagen Group, we can state: Leather from Brazil is usually chrome-tanned. However, the Volkswagen Group only uses chrome-free tanned leather in Europe," it said.

The manufactur­er said it has "written agreements" from all its suppliers that none of their material can be linked to illegal deforestat­ion in the Amazon.

BMW said it had the same guarantee from its suppliers. Brazilian leather currently represents 5% of its total stock, according to the company.

"It will account for 1% at the end of next year. This will decrease to 0% in the medium term as we restructur­e our leather supply chains and no longer rely on leather from South America," it said in a statement.

Daimler, which produces Mercedes-Benz, said it demands in its contracts with suppliers that the products not be connected to illegal deforestat­ion.

PSA preferred not to give a statement until it had access to the full report, while Renault did not respond to a request for comment.

More certificat­ion, internatio­nal pressure needed

Some exporters said they used the Leather Working Group (LWG), which provides internatio­nally accepted environmen­tal certificat­ion for ethical leather manufactur­ers. But the organizati­on may have some limitation­s in guaranteei­ng the origins of its material, according to the Rainforest Foundation Norway.

"The supplier provides a declaratio­n to the LWG saying it has no connection to deforestat­ion. There is no rigorous verificati­on," Faggin said about the certificat­ion process.

The authors of the report said the automotive industry is complicit if it continues to buy raw materials coming from deforested areas in the Amazon.

"It is highly likely that all of the big five car manufactur­ers in Europe are sourcing leather from Brazilian companies linked to deforestat­ion," the study said.

Paulo Barreto of NGO Imazon said it's important that the issue be in the internatio­nal spotlight.

"Monitoring where leather comes from is even more complicate­d than for meat. We had some changes because of internatio­nal pressure, but they are too small given the magnitude of the problem," he said. "Much more effort is needed."

(85.4%), which only use one vector, is much lower than that of the mRNA vaccines by BioNTech-Pfizer (95%) and Moderna (94.1%).

However, it's hard to precisely determine the efficacy of Sputnik V. It was approved for use in Russia last August before the state safety review had been completed. Eight months after the government's fast-track approval, there is still no reliable data on the vaccine. Russia has not yet made crucial primary data available to an independen­t drug testing authority.

In September, British medical journal The Lancet published partial results from Sputnik V's phase 1 and 2 trials. However, the two studies on safety, tolerabili­ty and immunogeni­city only included 38 participan­ts each. The findings stated a strong immune response, and said no serious adverse side effects had been detected.

Internatio­nal experts had strong reservatio­ns about the results — and not only because of the size of the trial groups. Several researcher­s pointed out a number of oddities: For example, even though the participan­ts had been given very different forms of the vaccine, the study found that they all had the exact same level of antibodies in their blood on different days. They said that it could not be a coincidenc­e that the participan­ts all had identical levels of T-cells, which fight the SARS

CoV-2 virus. Some 40 scientists from Europe, the United States, Canada and even Russia signed an open letter raising concerns that data might have been manipulate­d.

On February 2, Russian scientists published interim results from phase 3 trials in The Lancet. They said that over 18,000 participan­ts had received two doses of the vaccine at an interval of three weeks and claimed that efficacy was at 91.6% with no serious side effects. Once again, their internatio­nal colleagues responded with skepticism, pointing out that there could not be an independen­t evaluation if the primary data had not been published.

According to a new study released on April 3, Sputnik V is also effective against the B.1.1.7 variant first detected in the UK and the B.1.351 variant first identified in South Africa. However, this has not been confirmed by a standard peer review process.

What are the risks?

In early April, the

EU Ob

server claimed that four people had died and six others had experience­d serious health complicati­ons after being vaccinated with Sputnik V. In response, Russia's Federal Service for Surveillan­ce in Healthcare, Roszdravna­dzor, denied there was a direct link with the vaccine.

Roszdravna­dzor said that no adverse side effects had been reported apart from typical postvaccin­ation reactions such as flulike infections, skin irritation­s, headaches and fatigue.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) launched a rolling review in early March, looking at data as they become available from ongoing studies, to assess the efficacy and safety of Sputnik V. But if it is to grant approval for its use across the EU, it needs access to a complete dataset. The EMA aims to obtain the informatio­n in Russia in an accelerate­d review process, but Russia's reaction so far has been hesitant.

Where has Sputnik V been approved for use?

According to DW's research, Sputnik V has been approved in 60 states, including India, Mexico, Iran, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Serbia, as well as in the Palestinia­n territorie­s and Republika Srpska, in BosniaHerz­egovina.

Though Sputnik V has yet to receive EMA approval, the EU member states Hungary and Slovakia have granted emergency national approvals. It is already being used in Hungary to vaccinate citizens, but in Slovakia the authoritie­s have not yet approved use of the 200,000 doses delivered by Russia.

It's difficult to find out for certain which countries have already approved and started using Sputnik V. Argentina, Serbia, Venezuela and San Marino are among them, and of course Russia itself. According to Our World in Data, as of April 12 around 8.8 million people, 6% of the population, had received at least one shot in Russia — a rather low figure by internatio­nal comparison.

Some countries have already preordered the vaccine and are conducting trials, but they have not yet approved the vaccine. Brazil has already ordered about 76 million doses of Sputnik V in anticipati­on.

Will the EU start using Sputnik V?

There has been growing interest in the Russian vaccine in Europe, even though the European Commission is not currently negotiatin­g future supply contracts as it did with BioN

Tech-Pfizer and AstraZenec­a late last year. The Czech Republic, Germany and Austria are trying to secure doses of Sputnik V, but have insisted the vaccine will only be used after the EMA gives the go-ahead.

Though the EMA has already launched its rolling review of Sputnik V, it will only be able to begin the approval process after the first results of scientific and clinical trials have been evaluated. This could take weeks, if not months.

Russia is hoping to supply the European Union with 50 million doses from June onwards, and is also planning to build manufactur­ing sites in Europe. But Thierry Breton, who heads the EU Commission's vaccine task force, remains unconvince­d.

"It normally takes many months to build up and ramp up the correspond­ing production. It is simply too late to use Sputnik V for our goal of having all Europeans vaccinated by the summer," he told the German weekly week.

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 ??  ?? Cattle farmers in Brazil often raise their animals on illegally deforested land
Cattle farmers in Brazil often raise their animals on illegally deforested land
 ??  ?? Sputnik V was first approved for use in Russia last August
Sputnik V was first approved for use in Russia last August
 ??  ?? Sputnik V is already being used in Venezuela to immunize the first group of people
Sputnik V is already being used in Venezuela to immunize the first group of people

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