BRAZIL THE NEXT GREAT VEGAN NATION?

PLANT-BASED LIVING is swiftly gaining popularity all around the world—but looking at Brazil, you wouldn’t know it. The South American country is the world’s second-largest beef producer, second-largest chicken producer, third-largest pork producer, and fifth-highest meat consumer. Brazil is also home to two of the five top meat producers on the planet. Meat consumption in the planet’s fifth most-populous country has exploded, almost doubling since 1990 to nearly 220 pounds per person each year.

Meanwhile, Brazil’s radically conservative new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been outspoken in his anti-environmental stance, promising to roll back protections of the Amazon rainforest and implement unprecedented monitoring of non-profit organizations. Mere hours after Bolsonaro took office, he transferred regulation of indigenous rainforest reserves to the Ministry of Agriculture, which (not unlike the USDA in the United States) is heavily influenced by agribusiness lobbying dollars.

Yet the country boasts progressive food policies. Several cities have implemented Meatless Monday programs, and the Ministry of Health’s has recommended a lowered consumption of animal products, as well as an emphasis on reducing processed foods, encouraging people to opt for whole foods cooked