Another reason to buy local food

Cheap Brazilian beef imports are 'subsidised by slave labour'

Beef sold in British pubs, hospitals, schools and office catering is likely to come from Brazilian ranches cleared and worked by slave labour, according to a report to be published later this year.

David Ismail, a Perthshire farmer who has been awarded a scholarship by the Nuffield foundation, visited Brazil to research the social conditions under which the growing exports of beef - which are undermining the world price - are produced.

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His report says that illiterate, landless labourers, housed in shacks, were deprived of medical assistance and sometimes chained to trees. The labourers, mostly from the poor north-east, are brought in to cut down the forest of central Brazil with rough tools and are unpaid, bullied, brutalised and sometimes shot. They are promised high wages, only to find that their board and rations exceed what they are paid.

Labels: Local Food