Environmentally conscious consumers who switch from cow’s milk to soya milk may be doing harm to the rainforest because it is cleared to grow soya beans. Vast areas in South America, including in the Amazon, have been cleared to grow soya and demand for it continues to drive illegal deforestation. Cows in Britain are fed partly on soya but a litre of soya milk requires 11 times as much of it as does a litre of cow’s milk, according to a new study. Britain imports 1.1 million tonnes of soya a year to be used in animal feed and between 92,000 and 173,000 tonnes is fed to cows. Soya accounts for only a fraction of the protein consumed by most cows, however, because most

Source: The Times August 16, 2020 23:06 UTC