The Decibel - The dark side of collagen

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Collagen supplements are marketed as a holy grail anti-aging product. Bovine collagen is made from cattle hides, and a new investigation from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism traced the supply chain of some collagen companies all the way to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.Elisângela Mendonça is a London-based Brazilian journalist with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Her reporting pulls back the curtain on the dark side of the booming collagen industry.This episode originally aired on March 27, 2023.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

Hi, it's Mainika. Today, we're re-airing one of our most popular episodes of the year. It's about the multi-billion dollar collagen industry. It's taking over the beauty and wellness trade, but what are the real costs behind it? Have a listen. Nowadays, the simple things are vital. Beyond that, it's rest, water, movement, and vital proteins. That's Jennifer Aniston in an ad for Vital Proteins, which is a collagen powder supplement. The collagen industry is a multi-billion dollar business. And while there's still debate over how effective it is, the sell is clear. Collagen is supposed to make you look and feel better. But its origins are often

destructive in one of the world's most biodiverse ecosystems. Elisangela Mendonça is a Brazilian journalist based in London. She was part of a team with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, who dug into the collagen industry, tracking the product from store shelves to the Amazon rainforest. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Elisa-Angela, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. So collagen supplements are used for arthritis. It's also an ingredient now in the beauty industry, right? It's sold as a powder. It's in face creams. It's supposed to be good for your skin and your nails and your hair. But what actually is collagen? Yeah, collagen is the most abundant protein found in the human body.

And it's essential, as you said, for the health of bones, skin, blood vessels, and all the body organs. It has also become very famous in the beauty industry because of its anti-aging effects, basically. But collagen can also be synthesized from outside sources and ingested as supplements. Most of the collagens that we see sold in the markets or different retailers, such as Walmart or Costco in the US, they are extracted from pigs, fish, and cattle. So, bullvine collagen is the type of collagen that we investigate in, and it's one of the best-selling types of collagen available in the market today. So, basically, an animal byproduct. Okay. So, it comes from animals, and as you said, collagen is naturally in our bodies. It's a protein that we produce, a major component of our bones and our skin or even our tendons. But collagen supplements are kind of used now in this health and wellness industry. And some people say they get good benefits from it. But scientifically speaking, the jury's kind of still out on this. But Elisangela, you and your colleagues looked into collagen production in Brazil. How did this investigation actually come about? How did it start? Bovine collagen is a so-called byproduct of the cattle industry, which in Brazil is the major

driver of deforestation. Only in the Amazon, the cattle industry is responsible for 80 percent of all deforestation that's taking place on the ground. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism where I work has conducted a number of different investigations into food commodities such as beef and soy and has established the links between these commodities and deforestation in Brazil. So this story about collagen was found basically while we were working on another investigation that involved Nestle and the invasion of indigenous territories in Brazil and deforestation as well. So basically, the company Nestle was one of Nestle's suppliers were buying cattle raised illegally inside indigenous territories and in recently deforested areas in Brazil. So we were working on this investigation when we noticed in export records, we noticed that there

was a lot of collagen, this product that we haven't paid attention to yet, being exported outside of Brazil to different locations in the world, the US, the EU, the UK. So we decided that it would be interesting to understand a little bit more about this industry that nobody had paid attention into yet. You and your team, you went to Nestle with this information that you found about where their collagen products originate. What was their response to all of this? Yeah, I think it's fair to say that this investigation caught the companies by surprise, and they took it seriously when we contacted them. In the end, I think no company wants to be linked to deforestation. At a time, we are discussing ways to deal with the climate crisis, especially these big brands like Nestle.

So Nestle, which owns Vito Proteins, the brands that we mentioned in our investigation, they said they would contact their suppliers to investigate our allegations. They also said that everything that we presented to them is not in line with their commitments to responsible sourcing and that they have a goal to achieve a deforestation-free supply chain by 2025. Interestingly, Vital Proteins, the brand advertised by Jennifer Aniston, Vital Proteins contacted its customers to say that they would end the sourcing of raw materials from the Amazon region. So the reporting took the companies initially by surprise, but all the outcry that followed the publication of our investigation

made the companies take action immediately, which is good news for everyone. So tell me a little bit more about this reporting then, Alessandra, because people on the ground actually looking at trucks that were taking product from facility to facility, what actually did you find there? So we sent the teams to different parts of Brazil at different times, of course, to interview local experts and also truck drivers transporting the raw materials from one side to the other. And what we found was a stark contrast between a product that's sold everywhere and it's endorsed by celebrities and it's linked to wellness and beauty and has this fancy faces attached to it, to a very problematic and controversial industry. That's the cattle industry in Brazil.

The smell is very strong, and basically the truck's transporting the raw materials, which is bovine hides that comes from slaughterhouses. So basically the skin is taken out of the animal at a slaughterhouse and then it's transported to another facility. What does that smell like? It smells like death, basically. It's a disgusting smell of something that's rotting because it's literally the trucks are not refrigerated. So apart from the smell, you can also see the flies everywhere. And it's a very disgusting feeling that you have when you're around these facilities because the smell, it gets attached to you somehow and it gets,

it gets inside your nose. And after we left the proximity of the facilities, we continued to feel the smell at least an hour later. Usually we joke that a good journalist is the one that has a good nose for news. And in this case, we could confirm that because we could feel the smell of the trucks approaching. And we could confirm that they were carrying bovine hides because of the smell of the trucks approaching and we could confirm that they were carrying bovine hides because of the smell. So basically, we followed the trucks that we sensed that were carrying bovine hides. So we could talk to the drivers and confirm that they were carrying bovine hides and sending the raw materials to the collagen factories.

Yeah. So when we're talking about the collagen supplement industry here, how much money is involved? How big is this industry? Basically, this is an industry that is booming these days. It has become this wellness product that has now taken the world by storm. And it's an industry that's worth $4 billion globally per year. And every expert that we interviewed, they forecast that the industry will not stop growing anytime soon. So you're reporting really focused on the supply chains for the company Nestle. And Nestle owns another company called Vital Proteins. And one of Vital Proteins' big products are collagen supplements. So walk me through where the supply chain actually starts. How did you find out where

the cows for this collagen are raised? So it was a matter of combining the information that we already had about the beef trade in the country with every other aspect of this multi-layered and complex supply chain. So it took us seven months to put all the evidence together. And we basically combined public records with satellite imagery, different data sets that we cross-referenced to make sure that we have found the connections between different companies. Because there's a lot of work to turn a cow into collagen powder. There are many companies involved. And we understood that the links between the collagen industry and the beef industry, they are everywhere. So it's a systemic issue.

There are different collagen producers in the country that benefit from the vast network of farmers, slaughterhouses, tanneries, and all the different middlemen that are involved in the collagen production in Brazil. I think we should just be very clear, if you can help us spell this out right now, the connection between the cattle industry and the collagen industry here. We know they're both products that come from cows. These cows are primarily being farmed for beef, for food. So doesn't it make sense, though, that we would use all the parts of the cow that we could? So if we're already killing the cow for the meat, why not take the collagen as well? So what we discovered is that the collagen industry

is considered a byproduct of the cattle industry. It's a very profitable industry. So the companies in the end, they need to be held responsible for all the destruction that's being driven by the cattle industry. It needs to be seen as a commodity that it's part of the profits of the cattle industry. If you think about the bottom line of this industry, the margins are very narrow in the beef industry. So cattle byproducts, they account for a quarter of the income of the profits of this industry. So cattle byproducts, they account for a quarter of the income of the profits of this industry. So this is interesting because when we think of a byproduct of something, it's almost kind of like an afterthought, right? We're killing the cow for the beef anyways. We might as well take the collagen too. But when you're saying collagen is a quarter of the profits of raising

cattle like this, that's a very significant number. This is not really an afterthought. This is the argument that the cattle industry has used for years. Basically, that the industry recycles materials from the slaughterhouses that would otherwise be discarded. But there's a growing chorus of voices who say that industries trading all the saleable parts of the cow have a responsibility to trace and responsibly source them. So we spoke to a number of experts who said that collagen should be no different. Non-meat products, they account for just under half of a slaughtered cow, for example, in terms of their weight.

So it can generate up to a quarter of meat packers' income. And are they not being held responsible then? Like, is collagen not regulated the same way like beef products are, for example? So far, we have found that in Europe or in the UK, where we have some quite tough legislation coming into place to tackle deforestation in supply chains, we have found that collagen is not covered. This is a loophole in the legislation that has not yet been looked at. And it grows in importance at the moment, especially because of the relevance of the collagen industry. So why is there this loophole? Why is it not included?

One thing that's fair to mention is that the new EU legislation to tackle deforestation does include leather, for example, which is a cattle industry byproduct as well, used everywhere in Europe, in the US, but collagen has received little or no attention yet because of the complexities that exist to monitor this industry that's vast and it's multilayered in Brazil. We'll be back in a moment. I want to ask you a little bit more broadly about the beef industry in Brazil, because it is a major beef supplier. But there's a wider political context there about why there is so much cattle ranching going on, so much deforestation in order for this to happen there.

It really surged under former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. So what exactly did he do in terms of legislation that supported the agriculture business and in the process really lead the way for deforestation? Yeah, so in the past years, especially during the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro, we witnessed the reduction, the drastic reduction of investments in monitoring and law enforcement that turned this problem into something even bigger. What we see is that there's a lot of impunity in Brazil specifically when it comes to environmental crimes and crimes against traditional communities such as indigenous peoples. We have seen a concerning increase of deforestation during the years of President

Bolsonaro. And this is a big challenge for the new government to tackle. But the cattle industry is one to be blamed, if we can say that, because it's one major driver of deforestation in the country. Basically, 80% of the deforestation in the Amazon is linked to the expansion of the cattle industry. entire ecosystems and destroying biodiversity by grabbing the land very often illegally, chopping down the forest, and then raising cattle to supply the main meat packers, such as JVS, for example, the biggest meat packer in the world. Also, this isn't just any forest, right? This is the Amazon rainforest. This is significant globally to the health of the planet. Yeah, if we are serious about fighting the climate crisis, we cannot disregard all the issues that are taking place in the Amazon.

The Amazon is a very rich and biodiverse ecosystem that we have to protect and also protect the rights of indigenous peoples on the ground. Yeah, can you tell me a little bit more about indigenous territories that have been affected there in Brazil? Because cattle ranching takes a lot of space. So what are the impacts on the environment, the territories, and the people who live there? Yeah, when we talk about the expansion of the cattle industry in Brazil, we are talking about

violence as well. There's no possibility that the expansion of the cattle industry can take place without violence. And we are talking about the expansion of cattle ranches towards indigenous territories. So what happens is that many landowners, they take advantage of the vulnerability of these territories and they just expand their properties towards indigenous lands. But this expansion is often achieved with violence. So many communities, they are kicked out of their territories or they're threatened or indigenous peoples are killed at a high rate in Brazil.

So during our investigation, we have witnessed that on the ground. We have found at least 2,600 square kilometers of deforestation that is linked to the collagen industry with the suppliers that we investigated. And a lot of this deforestation took place inside indigenous territories, different indigenous territories in different regions of Brazil. Just lastly here, I think, honestly, a lot of people probably don't necessarily think about the impact of something like collagen on the environment. And so from the work and investigating that you've done here, is there a way that people can check where their collagen is coming from and then maybe have more choice over what they're buying? Yeah. So this investigation linked collagen for the first time as this

ingredient that can cause harm to the environment. It's new. What we can do is push companies and governments for more transparency. That's the key for us to have a better sense or a better understanding of where our food or the products that we buy are coming from. So until today, we had no transparency or oversight in this industry. So I think our role as journalists, but also our role as society is to push for more transparency so the companies can be held accountable and scrutinized for the choices that they make, the suppliers that they do business with. Elisa-Angela, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today about your work. Thank you for having me.

That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our summer producer is Nagin Nia. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.