While Native Del Mar tries its best to preserve wildlife, other companies are actively hurting our environment. In the document below, a letter is written to the CEO of JBS, a meat processing company that heavily contributes to deforestation.
Dear Giliberto Xandó,
I am writing to you in a sense of urgency; as our environment is our future and I sense the environment is in grave danger. I’m concerned that so many of us have chosen to neglect our environment in the pursuit of wealth. Your Company, JBS - one of the largest meat producers in the world- is one of many who attribute to this issue. Your company is known to be heavily involved in conflicts involving deforestation. But we must remember the importance of our environment and make an effort to fix these wrong doings. I dream of one day making a notable change that will positively affect our earth.
I am in my third year at Francis Parker High School, which is in San Diego, California. I am the leader of a local non-profit called Native Del Mar and have been restoring native plant and animal life on public land since 2018. But I understand the repairs I have been making in my small community aren’t going to save this planet. The Amazon Rainforest provides for 19% of the oxygen we breathe. We all rely on these forests, yet it has been said that in the past two years, 105,114 acres of the Amazon alone has been deforested in the support of your company.
You have received numerous allegations which accuse you of supporting the illegal deforestation of the Amazon. In particular, your company has been knowingly working with suppliers who illegally deforest land to feed their cows and thereafter transport their cows to legal land. This has been proven by photographs. Yet despite all of this incriminating evidence, you refuse to publicly release who your suppliers are and havn’t made a material effort to fix their wrong doing.
I understand the difficulty you incur when searching for reliable “legal” farmers when you have to work with so many. It must be difficult to run background checks and monitor their actions 24/7. That is why it would be beneficial if you publicly released the names of those you are currently using. We, the public, could help you police your suppliers by identifying to you those who have been known to commit illegal acts and mass deforestation.
With or without our help though, you are going to have to take some serious steps to change your business practices if we are going to save this planet. You announced a promise that by 2035, you will have a net zero deforestation impact- the boldest climate commitment made by any meat company. But, your pledge provides no plan describing how you intend to achieve this goal. In the past, you have made a similar claim, and backtracked on it a few years later. We’ve seen these same empty promises with our own politicians here in the United States: pushing the date out far enough so that it is someone else's problem. However, this is everybody’s problem.
Deforestation contributes to nearly 4.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, which both acidifies the ocean, and warms the planet. If the rates of deforestation continue to increase, our world's environment and structure will drastically change, which could lead to both famine, and mass extinction. However you can help to reduce these numbers by providing and faithfully implementing an effective plan that can accomplish this goal. Not only will your company have succeeded in helping to save the environment, but you would be a role model to other companies which would coherently boost your company’s reputation leading to more sales to your larger customers (who themselves are facing more and more public scrutiny to only purchase their meats from environmentally friendly suppliers).
I urge you to rethink your company's environmental plan and to consider the lasting effects you can have on our world. While I am only a high school student- I can understand the danger our environment is in right now. We need to take action before it is too late. I hope this letter helps to push us onto a path of environmental prosperity; you can lead by example and become a role model for all companies alike to help save our trees.
Sincerely,
Tyden Chinowsky