Slave labour casts pall over Brazil's biofuels confce
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
SAO PAULO, Nov 18 (AFP): The cost of slave labor in sugar cane fields should not be overlooked when promoting the virtues of ethanol, the Roman Catholic Church said yesterday, as an international conference on biofuel got under way in Brazil.
Conference host Brazil and United States, which use sugar and corn, respectively, to process ethanol, are the world's leading producers of the gasoline substitute that is growing in popularity worldwide.
Besides environmental concerns over the clearing of forests and jungles to grow biofuel crops, the Church's Pastoral da Terra (CPT) commission highlighted slave labor as a blotch on the biofuel industry.
Nearly 7,000 people were freed from virtual slave labor in Brazil's sugar cane fields from 2003 to 2008, the CPT said in a statement issued at the start of a five-day biofuel conference in Sao Paulo attended by 40 countries.
The CPT said reports of forced labor had "increased dramatically in Brazil's sugar industry, "where the proportion of workers freed from conditions analogous to slavery went from 10 per cent of the total workforce in 2003-2006 ... to 51 per cent in 2007 ... and 52 per cent so far in 2008."
Brazil's deputy Foreign Minister for energy and technology Andre Amado told reporters he was "outraged" that Brazil's biofuel industry was the target of a "denigration" campaign.
But CPT fired back with a statement calling the Foreign Ministry's dismissal of investigative work done by other government officials into forced labor in the country "scandalous."
Conference host Brazil and United States, which use sugar and corn, respectively, to process ethanol, are the world's leading producers of the gasoline substitute that is growing in popularity worldwide.
Besides environmental concerns over the clearing of forests and jungles to grow biofuel crops, the Church's Pastoral da Terra (CPT) commission highlighted slave labor as a blotch on the biofuel industry.
Nearly 7,000 people were freed from virtual slave labor in Brazil's sugar cane fields from 2003 to 2008, the CPT said in a statement issued at the start of a five-day biofuel conference in Sao Paulo attended by 40 countries.
The CPT said reports of forced labor had "increased dramatically in Brazil's sugar industry, "where the proportion of workers freed from conditions analogous to slavery went from 10 per cent of the total workforce in 2003-2006 ... to 51 per cent in 2007 ... and 52 per cent so far in 2008."
Brazil's deputy Foreign Minister for energy and technology Andre Amado told reporters he was "outraged" that Brazil's biofuel industry was the target of a "denigration" campaign.
But CPT fired back with a statement calling the Foreign Ministry's dismissal of investigative work done by other government officials into forced labor in the country "scandalous."