While Australia’s beef industry has been debating how deforestation should be defined in Australia, conservation groups have claimed a major victory by influencing one of the industry’s single largest customers to commit to buying only “deforestation free” beef by the end of 2025.
The seeds of yesterday’s decision by Woolworths were effectively sown four years ago.
In 2020, Woolworths signed up to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), binding the supermarket giant to several commitments which include setting ‘zero deforestation targets’ by no later than 2025.
Since then Woolworths has come under increasing pressure from conservation groups to publicly commit to that pledge.
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) greeted yesterday’s deforestation-free commitment from Woolworths as “fantastic news” on social media while simultaneously stepping up pressure on Coles to do the same.
Hypocrisy at the centre of deforestation debate
One of the many things that are frustrating Australian cattle producers as conservation groups and mainstream media drive this debate is the apparent hypocrisy in the way in which cattle production is being singled out and publicly villified.
Is there a single food produced at scale that has not come from ‘deforested’ land as environmental groups would define it?
Certainly none of the major plant-based foods produced from monocultures could claim to be “deforestation free”.
The ACF has recently been attempting to position itself in media articles and social media posts as a “friend” of Australian farmers, stating that problematic deforestation activity is limited to only a small number of landholders.
But contrasting with that apparent charm offensive to the rural sector have been its public release of reports and investigations in which it suggests Australian farmers are contributing to wildlife extinction.
Just a few days before Woolworths announced its deforestation-free commitment in its 2024 annual report yesterday, an ABC news article also gave full voice to another ACF campaign implying that illegal and reckless deforestation is widespread in Australia’s beef industry.
“There’s one industry that destroys more forests than any other — beef,” the article began.
It then presented numerous satellite images of land clearing on various properties since 2020, without mentioning that landholders can only carry out clearing under stringent planning and regulatory regimes and at risk of severe penalties for any breaches.
Definitions are an important for deforestation policy
The coining of the catch-all term “deforestation” has been an exceptionally successful strategy for environmental groups.
It evokes immediate images of bulldozers crashing through virgin Amazon rain forest regardless of the type of clearing actually involved, such as regrowth control on Australian cattle properties where many natural habitats remain intact.
It has been the use of this term by environmental groups that has left the Australian cattle industry with little choice but to work to develop a clear definition of what deforestation is and what it is not.
Cattle Australia has been leading that process and has been doing so in an inclusive way, working with groups such as the World Wildlife Fund which, like the ACF, have been long-term vocal critics of the Australian beef industry.
Yet these efforts were portrayed in the ABC article as attempt by the cattle industry to use the dictionary as “a weapon” in a bid to avoid its responsibility to the environment.
The ABC article also failed to point out that other jurisdictions and major bodies around the world including Europe and the United Nations have also developed definitions of deforestation, and that those exclude agricultural land from deforestation because of the industry’s essential role in assuring food security.
Nor did it provide any balancing context on the reality of woodland thickening.
Woolworths indicates support for CA’s definition
While publicly committing to deforestation-free beef by the end of 2025, Woolworths also stated it will “continue working with beef producers and suppliers to develop appropriate sustainability definitions in the Australian context”.
It is worth noting that the same conservation groups that have pushed Woolworths towards a deforestation-free beef committment have also campaigned against Cattle Australia’s efforts to create a definition for deforestation in Australia.
They are lobbying for their own definitions which would effectively prevent clearing of any regrowth aged 15 years and older.
For its part Cattle Australia released a statement yesterday putting a positive spin on Woolworth’s announcement, welcoming its “acknowledgement and support to continue working with beef producers and suppliers to develop appropriate sustainability definitions in the Australian context”.
“It is vital the fog of confusion that has been created by some environmental groups around misleading deforestation perceptions is refuted and ignored,” Cattle Australia CEO Chris Parker said.
“The continued focus on their interpretation of international frameworks, in which these groups ignore or downplay the land use assessment requirement of the predominant agricultural use, is disingenuous at best.
“We strongly encourage all major supermarkets and other industry stakeholders to not fall for this trap.”
There was no ‘one size fits all’ approach to environmental policy, he added, and it was “vital we ensure definitions recognise and respect the intricacies of responsible and sustainable beef production in the unique Australian landscape”.
“It is ludicrous to believe the policies and definitions adopted by other nations can be transposed onto us here, and we acknowledge the commonsense now being shown by some significant linkages in the beef supply chain in their approach to supporting both ecological health and Australia’s role as a key contributor to global nutrition and food security,” Dr Parker said.
In response to Beef Central’s inquiries yesterday Cattle Australia said the release of the Australian deforestation definition is ‘imminent’.