Exposing the Secrets Behind Burger King and Global Meat Production Report

The report argues that Burger King lacks transparency and effective policies to prevent deforestation in its supply chain, contrasting it with competitors like McDonald's. Through field investigations and satellite mapping, the authors link Burger King's suppliers—specifically soy traders Cargill and Bunge—to the destruction of the Brazilian Cerrado and Bolivian lowland forests. The document highlights the resulting loss of biodiversity, carbon emissions, and violence against indigenous peoples, while advocating for the expansion of the Brazilian Amazon Soy Moratorium to other Latin American ecosystems.

• Burger King is criticized for a lack of transparency and environmental policy, scoring zero on the Union of Concerned Scientists’ 2016 scorecard for beef sellers' deforestation profiles and lagging behind competitors such as McDonald’s and Wendy’s.
• Industrial soy production, which provides approximately three quarters of the world's soy for animal feed, has led to the conversion of diverse native ecosystems into monocultures across South America, including the Amazon rainforest, the Argentine Chaco, and the Atlantic Forest in Paraguay.
• In the Brazilian Cerrado, a biodiversity-rich savanna that provides water for half of Brazil's watersheds, more than half of the natural vegetation has been destroyed. Analysis identifies Cargill and Bunge as the two soy traders most closely linked to this deforestation.
• Between 2011 and 2015, 29 municipalities in the Cerrado where Bunge operated commercial silos saw 567,562 hectares of deforestation, while 24 municipalities with Cargill silos saw 130,000 hectares of deforestation over the same period.
• In Bolivia, deforestation is heavily concentrated in the Santa Cruz region, with up to 90% of this clearing reported as illegal. Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) are identified as the most common buyers of soy in the visited locations.
• Deforestation for soy and cattle in Brazil and Bolivia has led to severe human rights abuses, including the displacement of indigenous groups like the Ayoreo and the murder of forest defenders by hit men hired by agricultural interests.
• The Soy Moratorium in the Brazilian Amazon successfully reduced new soy plantations from deforested land from 30% to 1% following the agreement, demonstrating that agricultural growth is possible without deforestation.

APA

Bellantonio, M., Hurowitz, G., Grønlund, A. L., & Yousefi, A. (2017). Exposing the Secrets Behind Burger King and Global Meat Production Report. Mighty Earth. https://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MightyEarth_MysteryMeat.pdf

Chicago

Bellantonio, Marisa, Glenn Hurowitz, Anne Leifsdatter Grønlund, and Anahita Yousefi. Exposing the Secrets Behind Burger King and Global Meat Production Report. Mighty Earth, 2017. https://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MightyEarth_MysteryMeat.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Bellantonio |first1=Marisa |last2=Hurowitz |first2=Glenn |last3=Grønlund |first3=Anne Leifsdatter |last4=Yousefi |first4=Anahita |title=Exposing the Secrets Behind Burger King and Global Meat Production Report |publisher=Mighty Earth |date=February 2017 |url=https://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MightyEarth_MysteryMeat.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{bellantonio2017exposing, author = {Bellantonio, Marisa and Hurowitz, Glenn and Grønlund, Anne Leifsdatter and Yousefi, Anahita}, title = {{Exposing the Secrets Behind Burger King and Global Meat Production Report}}, institution = {Mighty Earth}, year = {2017}, month = feb, url = {https://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MightyEarth_MysteryMeat.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }