Stop destroying the Amazon

10 years ago, Cargill, the world's largest commodities trader made a commitment. They would stop buying "Amazon soy" - soy cultivated in the deforested areas of the crucially important and biologically diverse Amazon jungle. For years soy farmers had cleared vast swaths of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest to produces the valuable crop.

But recent studies have shown that the "soy moratorium" may have died. Cargill didn't exactly stop purchasing from Amazon suppliers, they just shifted their sights to the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado regions. Now these regions are under the same severe threat of deforestation that was the impetus for the original moratorium in the first place.

Cargill uses a large part of this soy as feed for it's chickens that it then sells to some of the UK's largest brands including McDonald's, Tesco's and Morrisons. So, every time you take a bite out of a chicken sandwich you could be complicit in the continued destruction of some of the most important ecological areas in the world.

Activists are currently pushing Cargill to expand their "soy moratorium" to exclude soy grown in the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado. As the world's largest commodities company, making the commitment to buy from more sustainable producers could single handedly help curb the destruction caused by deforestation in these sensitive areas.

We too should demand that Cargill to do the right thing by promising to stop buying soy from growers who are helping to destroy the precious Amazon and Cerrado regions. Please sign the petition and tell Cargill to stop participating in the deforestation of the Amazon. Tell them to stop buying unsustainable soy.