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In Brazil, a railway project threatens to overrun the environment and the rights of indigenous peoples.
A thousand kilometer railway line is intended to make industrial soy production in Brazil cheaper and increase exports. As the second largest buyer of Brazilian soy, the European Union is already partly responsible for the social and ecological damage caused by soy production and for the expansion of cattle pastures in forest areas. Brazil's indigenous population are resisting the construction, pointing to the disregard of their rights and the threat to the climate and biodiversity.
News
An appeal from human and veterinary medicine on the occasion of EUROPEAN ANTIBIOTIC AWARENESS DAY 2021
Modern medicine is unthinkable without antibiotics. Their availability for the treatment of bacterial infectious diseases saves countless lives worldwide every day. Due to the increasing emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), we are currently in danger of losing effective antibiotics - nothing less than global health is at stake. The high and regular use of antibiotics in animal husbandry, which fosters antimicrobial resistance, is therefore no longer acceptable.
Press Release
Europe's demand for soy and meat contributes significantly to deforestation and the destruction of important ecosystems in Latin America - proposed EU legislation does not have sufficient impact
The legislative proposal presented today by the EU Commission to exclude deforestation in the supply chains of companies operating in the EU market does not go far enough, according to the environment and development organisation Germanwatch. Katharina Brandt, policy advisor for agriculture at Germanwatch, says: "If we want to curb the climate crisis and stop the global extinction of species, savannahs and wetlands must not fall victim to the cultivation of soy for industrial livestock farming in Europe."
Blogpost
The European Union’s high demand for soy still causes deforestation and nature degradation of large areas in the countries of origin. In an online seminar hosted by Germanwatch, researchers, activists, members of civil society organisations and political decision makers discussed different measures to end EU-driven deforestation and ecosystem degradation in South America, especially in the tropical dry forest of the Gran Chaco.
On 14 October 2021, Alejandro Brown, president of Fundación Proyungas from the Gran Chaco, researchers Laura Kehoe (University of Oxford) and Alfredo Romero Muñoz (Humboldt University Berlin) as well as policy advisor Barbara Hermann (Climate Focus) highlighted the impacts of deforestation in the Gran Chaco through international trade and the difficulties of a zero-deforestation approach. They warned that the Gran Chaco is in a very critical state and further deforestation could lead to the total destruction of the ecosystems.
Publication
A so-called delegated act is currently being discussed at EU level, which is to provide criteria for the designation of antimicrobials that are reserved solely for humans and can then no longer be used in animal husbandry. On 15 September, the EU Parliament will decide on an objection to this delegated act. In essence, the objection provides for the delegated act to be revised again so that antimicrobials that are most important for humans ("critically important antimicrobials with the highest priority", WHO) can also be included in order to preserve their effectiveness.
Press Release
Poultry company PHW most heavily contaminated with almost 60 per cent of contaminated meat samples / Study commissioned by Germanwatch and human medicine specialists tests 165 chicken meat samples from the three largest groups in the EU, purchased among others from Lidl and Aldi in Germany, France, Poland, the Netherlands, and Spain.
More than every second chicken meat sample (51 per cent) from the three largest poultry companies in Europe is contaminated with resistance to one or even several antibiotics at the same time. On average, more than every third chicken (35 per cent) even carries antibiotic-resistant pathogens with resistance to critically important antimicrobials highest priority into the food chain. These are the alarming results of a study published October 27.
The study tested 165 chicken meat samples from the three companies, purchased in Germany, France, Poland, the Netherlands, and Spain.
Publication
Ranking of EU chicken meat companies according to contamination by antibiotic-resistant pathogens
Germanwatch discloses: Chicken meat from the PHW-Group, Germany's largest poultry company, is almost 60 percent contaminated with antibiotic-resistant pathogens. This is the result of a Germanwatch study in which chicken meat samples from the three largest EU producers were tested in the laboratory. Every third sample even showed resistance to reserve antibiotics. These are emergency antibiotics that people need when other antibiotics no longer help. The more resistant pathogens are introduced into the food chain and into our kitchens with chicken meat, the greater the health risk that these last-line antibiotics will lose their effectiveness.
Publication
Antibiotics in intensive animal husbandry - after years of efforts by the German government, this should no longer be a cause for concern. But unfortunately it is, as a study by Germanwatch shows: More than every second chicken in discounters is contaminated with antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Every third chicken meat sample was contaminated with germs that have resistance to antibiotics with highest priority for humans.
Publication
Quantification of CO2-emissions for Cattle Meat and Soya Imports
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to well below 2°C or even to 1.5°C, as emphasised by world leaders in the Paris Agreement reached in December 2015, can only succeed if deforestation is cut dramatically in the next decades because the resulting emissions nearly make up one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Most of the world’s deforestation is happening in South America and in Africa. Brazil has been the country with the largest deforestation for many years. It is far away from Europe, so can we lean back and put all responsibility for causing the emissions on Brazil?
Publication
This report provides an analysis of REDD+ project standards against expectations and principles set by the BMUB/IKI and Germanwatch. atmosfair contributed to this report with its experience in the field of MRV and climate integrity of offset projects. The goal of the report is to provide a clear underlying guidance for the use of one or several REDD+ standards for use by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the BMUB and beyond.
