How deforestation can increase anemia in children in the Amazon

What is the relationship between tapir, paca and other Amazonian land animals and the amount of oxygen carried in the blood of children living in remote areas of the rainforest? The largest study ever carried out in the world on the consumption of meat from wild animals and the occurrence of cases of anemia in children from 6 months to 5 years of age indicates that bushmeat is a fundamental item in the diet of Brazilians in early childhood that live in rural areas in the Amazon.

Conducted by researchers from the British Lancaster University, the University of São Paulo (USP), the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and the University of Pará, the study, already revised, and recently published by Scientific Reports (from the Nature group) exposes a paradox: the advance of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, driven by the creation of pasture areas for cattle, tends to reduce the supply of game meat to indigenous, riverine and traditional Amazonian communities, socially vulnerable groups.

As the pasture progresses, however, the possibility of beef reaching the plate of this population remains remote. With less meat available, children in the region are prone to anemia.

“It is worth making clear that people in rural Amazonia practically never consume beef. On average, these families eat steak once every two months. Therefore, beef is not supporting the food and nutrition security of these children.” , says social scientist Luke Parry of Lancaster University.

The 2021 Meat Atlas, prepared by the German Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is dedicated to tracking ecological causes, indicates that 63% of deforested areas in the Amazon are converted into pasture for cattle. But the meat produced there is not, as a rule, consumed locally.

Among the reasons why the presence of a beef fillet is so rare on a riverside family’s table are not only the price of meat, which is high for the average family income in these areas, but also the lack of electricity and any living conditions. refrigerate and store the highly perishable food. Chicken consumption is also uncommon.

On the other hand, while Brazil breaks deforestation records — with the destruction of more than 13,000 km^two just last year (the biggest loss since 2006)— a series of studies has already shown how the fauna is severely affected by the devastation of its habitat.

Not only do many animals die in the moment of burning or deforestation, but predators also lose their best food sources, species fail to find mating sites and animals become more exposed and vulnerable, which, over time, causes a significant reduction in hunting specimens.

“In the Amazon itself, the population reports this. When there is a degradation of the environment, animals whose meat is highly valued, such as the tapir or the peccary, tend to disappear from the region very quickly. Other species, such as the paca, seem to be more resilient to the devastation or predatory hunting”, says researcher Patrícia Carignano Torres, from USP, one of the authors of the study.

Extreme events, such as severe droughts or atypical floods, which have hit the Amazon region in recent years, further contribute to the environmental imbalance in areas already degraded by human action.

“There are good reasons to think that climate change and forest clearing increase the risks for children who today already face food insecurity and malnutrition,” says Parry.

According to a projection made by the researchers, a significant loss in the supply of game meat available in the region today would lead the rate of anemia in early childhood there to increase by 10%. This means that, in the state of Amazonas alone, up to 3,700 rural children would suffer from anemia.

In rural Amazonia, six out of ten children have anemia. In Brazil, one in ten

The researchers visited 1,100 households, chosen at random, in 4 municipalities in Amazonas, the most distant of which was more than 2,000 kilometers from the capital Manaus. In total, the researchers visited 58 Amazonian villages, 44 of them accessible only by boat.

To understand the role of bushmeat in people’s health, they cross-referenced the eating habits of the local population with the counts of the protein hemoglobin present in the blood of 610 children — the ideal indicator for diagnosing anemia.

Just a drop of blood, taken from the finger of the hand of the little ones at the time of the research, to verify in minutes if the child was or not anemic. Even so, for a large part of the local population, the exam — and the result — was a great novelty, since health care in the region is precarious.

The researchers found that in Amazonian cities, where the average bushmeat consumption is less than twice a month, there appears to be little impact from this protein source on early childhood health. In rural and remote areas, where the average consumption of game meat per family varies between 4 and 8 times a month, pacas, tapirs, howler monkeys, tortoises and peccaries are essential for children’s growth and development. The consumption of fish, abundant in both groups, showed no effect on the prevalence of blood disease in children.

Anemia is a disease that arises from a lack of iron in the body and is characterized by a low amount of hemoglobin in the blood. Hemoglobin, which gives blood its characteristic red hue, is responsible for carrying oxygen to all parts of the body. If a child’s blood cannot supply the body with the necessary amount of oxygen, its organs and muscles will struggle to develop in a healthy way. It is as if there is a lack of air for the cells to breathe and work — and that is why some of the typical symptoms of this disease are tiredness, weakness and pallor. Prevention of anemia is done through a diet rich in iron (red meats, dark-colored vegetables, eggs, legumes).

“Anemia, especially up to 5 years of age, usually leads to a deficit in the physical and cognitive development of these people, which will translate into a learning difficulty at school age and will have effects until adulthood, on the quality of work that person be able to play and, therefore, in the jobs they will get. Studies around the world have pointed to the role of anemia in the cycle of poverty: the child, anemic due to being in a vulnerable family, becomes a low-paid adult who tends to repeat the process of constituting a vulnerable family, with children with anemia and so on”, explains Torres.

In this sense, although bushmeat represents some nutritional security for these children, the researchers point out that it is not a “silver bullet” to save the childhood of the Amazon. And they prove this with data: according to the Ministry of Health, in 2020, the rate of anemia measured nationally in children between 6 months and 5 years of age was 10%. That is, one in ten Brazilian children in early childhood lives with the disease. In the rural Amazon areas visited by Torres, Parry and their colleagues, the rate jumps to 60%: for every ten children up to 5 years of age in these locations, six were anemic.

“We don’t even know today what micronutrients these wild animals have, there have never been studies of it. These children live with deprivation of a series of vitamins and minerals. the problem, as we can see from the number of anemic children”, says Torres.

Although the treatment of anemia is relatively simple — the regular intake of iron capsules or flour enriched with the metal, for example — it is difficult for this population to have access to health professionals who can guide parents or guardians and guarantee regularity in the treatment. free distribution of the supplement.

During the study, researchers were often asked to perform tests on people in the community who were not even part of the researched sample, but who saw the presence of professionals as a rare opportunity to obtain information on their health condition.

The Amazon has 1.1 doctors for every thousand inhabitants, while in the Southeast of Brazil there are 2.8 doctors for every thousand residents. And within the Amazon itself there is inequality: in Manaus, there are 2.8 doctors for every thousand inhabitants, compared to an average of 0.2 doctors in Amazonian municipalities with up to 50 thousand inhabitants. “Children’s health care is particularly erratic. The state of Amazonas covers 1.6 million km^two and has 3.8 million people, but only 344 pediatricians, predominantly located in the state capital.

“The neglect to which riverine populations have been relegated makes the human development index of these areas less similar to that of Brazil and more similar to that of Zambia”, says Luke Parry.

hunting and conservation

One of the most controversial aspects of the importance of bushmeat for the health of children in vulnerable families and in forested areas is that hunting can also prove to be destructive of the ecosystem on which these populations depend for their livelihoods.

This is a problem faced not only in the Amazon, but also in Africa. Prior to Torres and Parry’s article, minor research in Madagascar had already indicated that children under 12 in one of the island’s villages rely on bushmeat to ward off anemia. The same seems to be true for countries like Congo, Nigeria and Ecuador, although definitive research is lacking.

At the same time, scientists have described what they call the “bushmeat crisis” or “bushmeat crisis”, a process of massive predation of species in West African countries and in the Congo River basin, which today represents the greatest threat to extinction for great apes, other species of monkeys, elephants and antelopes.

In Brazil, however, it is a crime to “kill, chase, hunt or catch” species of wild fauna — native or migratory — whether they are endangered or not. Commercial, professional or sport hunters are prohibited, although enforcement is often insufficient.

Anyone caught, even with a single captured animal, is subject to imprisonment from 6 months to 1 year, and a fine. As exceptions to the rule are hunters who obtain special licenses from environmental agencies or temporary authorizations to hunt a particular species for population control — as in the recent case of wild boar/javaporcos in São Paulo.

The law also states that it is not a crime to kill an animal if the hunter is “in a state of need, to satisfy the agent’s or his family’s hunger”. But the text is criticized by environmentalists and sociologists because it does not define parameters to protect scientific hunting — when animals are collected for study — and subsistence hunting. “Brazilian law is confusing and subsistence hunting is in limbo. In practice, it is up to the agent, at the time of inspection, to define what hunger is and what these families need and whether they are committing crimes or not”, he notes. towers.

According to Parry, who has studied the Amazon region for years, the populations that most depend on hunting for their well-being — those in rural and vulnerable areas — are also those least likely to engage in massive, destructive predatory hunting, despite the lack of generalized management instructions.

“In many areas, hunting is quite sustainable, especially in more remote communities, when we have few families and a lot of forest around. already more at risk”, says the British social scientist.

The data suggest that environmental conservation is not enough to save species from extinction and children from anemia. “The Amazon needs sustainable economic development, which keeps the forest standing while generating more income so that the local population has access to better food and health practices”, summarizes Torres.

In the meantime, however, she is categorical in saying that the Brazilian State should not criminalize those who hunt for food.

“Our results make it clear that the population’s access to bushmeat should not be prohibited, not only for cultural and social reasons, but because part of the well-being and development of these children depends on it”, says Torres.