A Path to Accountability
Why Colombia Needs a Cattle Traceability System
In 2021, EIA revealed in its report, Tainted Beef, how Colombian supermarkets were linked to cattle ranchers connected to deforestation in national parks and in protected Amazon forests, as well as to funding armed groups.
New data analyzed by EIA shows that threats to Colombia’s national parks persist. Tens of thousands of cattle are still grazing within three of Colombia’s most deforested national parks, according to official vaccination data, while hundreds of thousands have been transported from rural districts that partially or fully overlap with these parks .
These cattle then enter supply chains and are sold in urban centers like Bogotá, with no traceability back to their origins. This data underscores the urgent need to approve the cattle traceability bill currently being considered in Congress, to ensure buyers and slaughterhouses exclude deforestation linked products from their supply chains to protect the country’s unique parks.
