Tropical Rainforest of Brazil

‘GfbV’ says that in Roraima (Brazil) a group of illegal gold-diggers attacked a village of natives. The gold diggers just wanted to make sure that the natives wouldn’t be in their way. Alas during the attack they shot a lady and wounded – I recall – three or four.

As most coffee beans come from Brazil I thought it would be a good idea to post this information here: The German TV-show ‘Marktcheck’ says acrylamide and glyphosate both can be found in most bags of coffee – not even depending on the brand. The thing is that both substances may cause cancer.

The latest episode of the documentary TV-show ‘ZDF besseresser’ says that as palm oil is much cheaper than the a little healthier cocoa butter many producers of chocolate-like creams or cookies actually use palm oil instead of cocoa butter. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in the EU this means that these products must not have the word ‘chocolate’ in their name – like chocolate drink, chocolate cookie, chocolate cream, chocolate muffin…However this does not mean that producers using palm oil must not use names that make you think they contain cocoa butter. For example you may still give your product names like ‘choc cookie’ or ‘choco cream’. Also it is legal to show pieces of real chocolate as advertisement – similar to how some juices don’t contain strawberries and yet a strawberry is shown on the bottle, because the juice is supposed to taste strawberry-like.

‘GfbV’ says that the bushfire in Pantanal (Brazil) currently threatens the lives of hundreds of indigenous people living in Brazil. Not only did the fire destroy their huts and many food supplies, but also many plants they need to produce medicine died in the fire. Plus rivers may get polluted in the fire – according to experts -, meaning that not all fish which is another source of food will survive and some sources of water maybe will not be save to drink.

‘GfbV’ says that Brazil imports most of its pesticides from other countries instead of producing their own pesticides. Alas the price matters more to them than the effects on human health or on the groundwater – which however would also concern human health. Thus almost 50% of their pesticides are extremely harmful to the human health. So hazardous and durable they even affect people who don’t even work on or around the fields sprayed with these pesticides!