My Big Mac Ate My Rain Forest

Dispelling more Myths About Beef

It was 2005 and I was swinging from a hammock on the deck of a rusted out ferry boat struggling down the Marañón River, a tributary of the Amazon.

The ferry to Iquitos. We had expected to be there in three days and took five instead.

My ride looked a bit like a post-apocalyptic Huck Finn steamboat, a four-story corroded wedding cake. The hull, open at the bow, held a menagerie of cattle and pigs spooked by the rocking floor. The main deck sported an open-air promenade that, until the vessel came up to cruising speed, reeked of livestock and diesel fumes. Above that, well-healed Peruvians and less adventurous Europeans sweated it out in stifling and spartan private cabins. Their only view of the largest rainforest in the world was through fogged and rusted shut portholes dripping with red oxide tears.

At the top of the boat, open to the sky except for a few corrugated panels on a rickety frame, was the hammock deck. This was my home for the next four days along with a half dozen ayahuasca-hungry Brits. We drained the onboard commissary of beer, swatted mosquitoes as we swung in our nylon sacks, and flipped through dog-eared Lonely Planets. Our port of call was Iquitos, the largest city in the world unreachable by roads.

My first experience with the Amazon didn’t disappoint. The piratical allure of riverboat travel, a toothless man trying to sell a three-toed sloth, the violent, silt-filled waters swiftly flowing down river like a giant chocolate milk flume ride. There is an overwhelming vastness to it all. The Amazon canopy is almost suffocating in all its oxygen-creating intensity. To this day, it is the most inspiring example of the natural world I have ever experienced firsthand.

Are we ready for the second in the series of Dispelling the Myths About Beef? 

Beef Myth #2: McDonald’s is chopping down all the Brazilian rain-forests for its Big Macs.

Remember the Captain Planet cartoon series from the 90s? Well, there was this episode where the bad guy, Verminous Skumm (voiced by Jeff Goldblum by the way), unleashes a yellow sludge into Brazil’s water system that turns everyone into rat monsters–I’m not making this up. The only cure is a rare rainforest plant. Unfortunately, when a local shaman brings Captain Planet to the spot where the plant normally grows, the forest is gone, completely mowed down by construction equipment. Suddenly, a diesel-spewing bulldozer rolls by with the driver shouting, “This land is getting used for what it does best, raising beef cattle!"