Wal-Mart to maintain beef ban
21/07/2009
Retailer Wal-Mart has issued a statement saying it intends to keep in place its ban of beef from the state of Pará in Brazil.
The company, along with a number of other important retail groups, took a decision to stop stocking beef from this part of the country in the wake of a report in June from Greenpeace, which claimed that livestock farmers in the region were contributing to illegal deforestation of the Amazon rainforests. Local companies in the beef and leather supply chain have been campaigning for the ban to be lifted.
The new statement from Wal-Mart says it will not buy supplies of beef from that part of the country until the authorities set up what it calls an acceptable, independent audit system for establishing which suppliers have been involved in illegal land clearances and which haven't.
"We have a commitment to the environment and to our customers," said the president of Wal-Mart Brazil, Héctor Núñez, in the statement. "We will only start doing business again with this region when an audit system, which the beef sector itself has proposed, comes into place. We believe this is the correct course of action for us to take at this time and that it is in keeping with what our customers expect of us."
The retailer said plans for such an audit system were in place and should allow it to have the guarantees it requires over the origin of all its Brazilian beef within the next two months.
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