do Pasto ao Prato

Project Summary

In Brazil, there are millions of farmers and thousands of companies producing and processing meat for everyday consumption. While most of these actors adopt good farming practices, a minority have a big impact on people and the planet - cattle ranching is a major driver of deforestation, forced labour, and fire in the country, and cases of poor sanitary practice are not infrequent.

‘do Pasto ao Prato’ (‘from Pasture to Plate’) is a transparency initiative and app which allows users to scan beef, pork and chicken products in Brazil to verify where that product comes from, and how it scores on environmental and social indicators. We cross information on where slaughterhouses sourced livestock with deforestation alerts, data on cases of forced labour, and fines for poor sanitary practices. By bringing these data together and packaging them in an easy-to-use app, we can help consumers make informed choices about what products to buy.

In addition, when users scan products using the app, they also identify the shop selling each piece of meat, and over time, help build a public database of how meat products flow within the country, from places of production through to consumers.

Do Pasto ao Prato is an initiative led by UCLouvain and Global Canopy, together with many partners in civil society (including the Imaflora, Repórter Brasil, IDEC, Imazon, O Mundo Que Queremos, Radar Verde, Greenpeace, Instituto Akatu, Amigos da Terra, Mighty Earth, and the Stockholm Environment Institute) and academia (USP, UFRN, UniFor, UFPB, and the University of Edinburgh).

This project has received funding from Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (BRA-22/0017), CIFF (Grant No. 2409-09836), and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 101162844).