To make room for cattle to graze, large swaths of the Amazon Rainforest is burnt down.
Hormel Foods, maker of SPAM and Hormel chili, has agreed to eliminate deforestation along its supply chain by 2025 in response to advocacy from Green Century Capital Management. To produce its extensive line of meat products, Hormel buys ingredients from regions throughout South America and Indonesia where deforestation is a major problem.
International standard-setting bodies such as the Science Based Targets initiative have advised that companies like Hormel must eliminate deforestation from their supply chains by 2025 to protect biodiversity and mitigate the impacts of climate change. When forests are burned down to make way for cattle, carbon stored in the forest is released into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases.
Companies can make an outsized impact on our climate and biodiversity by sourcing sustainably and refusing to work with those who destroy forests. Kudos to Hormel for joining the movement to eliminate deforestation from its supply chain.
Sammy Herdman
Former Save The Boreal Forest Campaign, Associate, Environment America