Collagen craze drives deforestation and rights abuses
For the first time an investigation has linked collagen powder to violence against Indigenous peoples in Brazilian forests
The stench arrives before the lorries do. They are carrying skins that were stripped from cattle carcasses days ago. Flies are everywhere.
The lorries’ destination is Amparo, a small industrial town in São Paulo state, southeastern Brazil. Here, Rousselot, a company owned by the Texan business Darling Ingredients, extracts collagen – the active ingredient in health supplements at the centre of a global wellness craze.
But while collagen’s most evangelical users claim the protein can improve hair, skin, nails and joints, slowing the ageing process, it has a dubious effect on the health of the planet. Collagen can be extracted from fish, pig and cattle skin, but behind the wildly popular “bovine” variety in particular lies an opaque industry driving the destruction of tropical forests and fuelling violence and human rights abuses in the Brazilian Amazon.
An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the Guardian, ITV and O Joio e O Trigo has found that tens of thousands of cattle raised on farms damaging tropical forests were processed at abattoirs connected to international collagen supply chains.
Some of this collagen can be traced all the way to Nestlé-owned Vital Proteins, a major producer of collagen supplements championed by the actress Jennifer Aniston. Vital Proteins is sold globally – including online on Amazon, in Walmart stores in the US, in Holland & Barrett and Boots in the UK and in Costco in both countries.
The investigation – the first to connect bovine collagen with tropical forest loss and violence against Indigenous peoples – found at least 2,600 sq km of deforestation linked to the supply chains of two Brazil-based collagen operations with connections to Darling: Rousselot and Gelnex, which is in the process of being acquired by Darling for $1.2bn. It is unclear how much of this deforestation, which was calculated by the Center for Climate Crime Analysis, is linked to Vital Proteins.
Continue reading.
6K notes
·
View notes
young Navajo women (L to R: Rita Dedman, Loranda Sales, and Karilyn Lujan) in Arizona Highways magazine - May 1975
704 notes
·
View notes