A new investigation, “Burned: Deception, Deforestation, and America’s Biodiesel Policy” by the organizations Mighty Earth and ActionAid USA has found that biodiesel is not the environmentally friendly, “green” fuel claimed by industry producers. On-the-ground investigators from Ecostorm documented bulldozing, burning and the recent clearance of 30,000 acres of forest to plant new soy fields in northern Argentina, which supply some of the same companies producing soy biodiesel for export to the United States.

The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) mandates increasing biofuel consumption through 2022, and has driven Argentina to increase soy-based biodiesel production for U.S. export. In 2016, Argentina provided over one-fifth of biodiesel consumed in the United States. The RFS is also contributing to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, the algal blooms in Lake Erie and other waterways and nitrate pollution across the Midwest, through increased crop production for biofuels in the United States.

“This isn’t the used cooking oil biodiesel powering Willie Nelson’s tour bus,” said Rose Garr, policy director at Mighty Earth. “The RFS was intended to clean up our transportation sector, but instead it’s subsidizing fuels that are even dirtier than oil.”

As the largest supplier of biodiesel imports, Argentina is currently a global hotspot of deforestation, caused primarily by soy production. The report also found significant quantities of biodiesel made from Indonesian palm oil being imported into the United States; palm oil has been Indonesia’s leading driver of deforestation, linked to habitat destruction of highly endangered species including orangutans and Sumatran elephants.

Mighty Earth and ActionAid USA sent a field team to Argentina’s Chaco forest to investigate the scope of this destruction. The team visited ten sites in the Chaco that are undergoing rapid deforestation for soy production, which it documented both on the ground and through aerial drones. They found new soybean fields carved into the middle of what were recently intact forests, and massive fires set to clear land for soy production. Although the Renewable Fuel Standard requires that biodiesel not be produced on recently cleared land, the report found evidence that major biodiesel producers like Cargill and Bunge were continuing to expand their overall soy operations into areas with significant deforestation.

“This appears to be a case where the left-hand claims to be clean while the right is in it up to its elbow,” said Garr.

In addition to the environmental impacts of this production, members of local communities are reporting serious health impacts connected to the expanded soy production incentivized by biofuels. Many families reported poisonings from the pesticides associated with this production, including glyphosate, which is sometimes sprayed aerially.

“The big agribusiness companies want you to believe they’re feeding the world. But they’re not. Kids are getting sick, local people are being forced off their land and animals are being killed, all to produce soybean oil that’s being shipped to the U.S. and burned as fuel for our cars and trucks,” said Kelly Stone, senior policy analyst at ActionAid USA. “Localizing food production and reforming our agriculture policies is an important part of tackling climate change. People’s rights to own and farm land and their right to a clean environment must not be sacrificed to feed the thirst of a broken Congressional policy.”

Mighty Earth and ActionAid USA’s report comes as the RFS is poised to be a key legislative fight in 2018. The organizations recommend that the United States ends or dramatically lowers mandates and subsidies for food-based biodiesel and other food-based biofuels. In addition, the agricultural traders and biodiesel producers who control the industry should adopt and fully enforce “No Deforestation, No Exploitation” commitments throughout their entire global supply chains in order to ensure that the soy and other commodities they sell is not produced through deforestation.

Although the recent decision by the Commerce Department to impose countervailing duties on Argentine and Indonesian biodiesel will likely curtail near-term imports, the massive environmental destruction in Argentina should serve as a cautionary tale. Because the RFS mandates remain in place, new biodiesel production will have to come on-line elsewhere, which poses risk to wildlife, people, and the climate.

“This problem won’t be solved by countervailing duties alone. If Congress does not end mandates for food-based biodiesel and other biofuels, this same destructive cycle could be replicated both at home and in other areas of the world,” said Garr.

Read the report here. 

Sign the petition here.

Ecostorm footage and research was used to show nearly every county in England now has at least one industrial-scale livestock farm, with close to 800 US-style mega farms operating across the UK, new research reveals.

The increase in mega farms – which critics describe as “cruel and unnecessary” – is part of a 26% rise in intensive factory farming in six years, a shift that is transforming the British countryside. Only 12 counties in the UK now host no pig or poultry farms classified as intensive by the Environment Agency. To be classed as intensive, a farm must have warehouses with more than 40,000 birds, 2,000 pigs or 750 breeding sows.

Herefordshire has more than 16 million factory-farmed animals, mainly poultry – which means the county has 88 times more factory-farmed animals than it does humans. Shropshire and Norfolk follow closely, with more than 15 million and 12 million animals respectively. Nearly every county in England and Northern Ireland has at least one mega farm, and they are also scattered across Scotland and Wales.

The march of US-style mega farms – defined in the US as facilities housing 125,000 broiler chickens, 82,000 laying hens, 2,500 pigs, 700 dairy or 1,000 beef cattle – has been revealed in an investigation by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Most of these farms have gone unnoticed, despite their size and the controversy surrounding them, in part because many farmers have expanded existing facilities rather than seeking new sites.

Mega farms and industrial-scale farms (that count as intensive, but not “mega” under the US definition) have previously attracted attention because of concerns raised by local residents, over smells, noise and the potential for pollution or disease outbreaks, and by animal welfare campaigners, who argue that factory-style farming in which livestock are rarely or never permitted outdoors prevents animals from expressing their natural behaviour. They also worry that mega farms are pushing smaller farmers out of business, leading to the takeover of the countryside by large agribusinesses, with the loss of traditional family-run units.

Their defenders say that the close controls on industrial-scale farms mean that disease, pollution and the carbon footprint can be kept to a minimum. Such farms also produce for consumers at a lower cost than small-scale farms.

Read the full report here

Soy is an important base ingredient of the world’s meat. Approximately three quarters of the world’s soy goes into animal feed.

But this soy production has left an enormous scar on the Earth’s surface. More than one million square kilometers of the planet – equivalent to the total combined area of France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands – are dedicated to growing soy according to some estimates.

In South America, soy and cattle interests have converted vast areas of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil’s Cerrado, the Argentine Chaco, Bolivian lowland forests and the Atlantic Forest in Paraguay from diverse native ecosystems into soy monocultures. From 2001-2010, an average of approximately four million hectares of forests were destroyed each year, mostly for soy and cattle.

Ecostorm contributed information, videos and photography to a major investigative project launched in February 2017 by US-based non-profit Mighty Earth. The New York Times published a major report on the investigation simultaneously.

Ecostorm has previously investigated the intensive livestock feed sector globally, including major reports on fishmeal in Peru and Thailand.

With soaring meat consumption around the world, vital omega 3-rich fish stocks destined for human mouths in western Africa are being snatched by foreign food companies to feed factory-farmed animals – and ultimately the populations of wealthier countries. Read our exclusive investigation with The Independent.

Our 18 month investigation with The Guardian into how antibiotic use on intensive pig farms has put a variation of the superbug MRSA in supermarket pork has been shortlisted for this year’s Guild of Food Writers “Investigative and Campaigning” award. Ecostorm and the Guardian won the prize in last year’s awards for our earlier undercover investigation into hygiene failings in the poultry sector.

Ecostorm’s major undercover investigations with Channel 4 News into the “terrible” working and living conditions for migrants in both UK fruit packing factories and on Spanish salad farms has won the Harold Wincott Award for Television Journalism of the Year.

The four part investigation, broadcast last year, prompted the judges to comment: “Channel 4 News took on a story about labour conditions in the supermarket fruit and vegetable packing supply chain, where an undercover reporter worked with Business Editor Siobhan Kennedy to lay out a charge sheet of appalling working conditions which resulted in an immediate response from the supermarkets involved.”

Watch the two lead films here:

More info here

Britain’s poultry sector is in the midst of its annual Christmas bonanza as consumers splash out on festive supplies. But as people rush to get their meat they may be unaware of a dark side to this industry. Previous investigations by the Guardian and ecostorm uncovered a catalogue of alleged hygiene failings in the poultry industry. And now there are also concerns about working conditions…

Read our special report in The Guardian here

An investigation published with The Independent newspaper today revealed how large US-style factory dairies and confinement units are spreading across the UK countryside. The findings come as the UK dairy sector continues to grapple with the consequences of the low price paid to dairy farmers, leading to soem farmers to exist the industry altogether. You can read the full investigation coverage here:

Plummeting milk price prompts ‘stealth’ rise of 2,000-cow ‘mega-dairies’ in UK

The controversial ‘mega-dairies’ that alarm campaigners and divide a struggling sector of British agriculture

Consumers would pay a premium to avoid the cruelty and environmental costs of factory-produced milk

Romania is home to Europe’s last remaining virgin forests and some of the continent’s largest populations of bears, wolves, and lynx. But these forests are under serious threat due to ‘rampant’ illegal logging, according to campaigners. During a major investigation spanning several years, to which Ecostorm contributed information and photographic evidence, the US-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) documented this illegal logging and examined the involvement of a leading Austrian-based timber and wood processing company. Read the report and other background.

We’ve been undercover with Channel 4 News investigating conditions for some those picking and packing supermarket fruit at a major facility in Kent. What we found was shocking and has provoked an immediate outcry. Our undercover reporter experienced first hand the highly-pressured environment at the Mansfields packhouse at Chartham, with managers breathing down workers’ necks to meet strict targets.

Some of them live in appalling conditions that they say are supplied by the agency they work for – and that some say aren’t fit for animals. The packhouse supplies fruit to top retailers, and after our evidence was broadcast Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Marks and Spencer have all told Channel 4 News they have launched investigations. And one supermarket, Aldi, has suspended its orders. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority has also launched an investigation into our findings.

You can watch part 1 of our exclusive investigation, and read the background here. Part 2 of the story follows tonight (Tuesday, 20th October). The investigation follows our reporting earlier this year which highlighted the plight of migrants harvesting salad on farms in Spain, much of destined for UK supermarkets, and earlier investigations into the hard labour behind Italy’s orange trade.