As Hochul Weighs Deforestation Bill, Sysco Steps in to Lobby

UPDATE: On December 22, Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed the tropical deforestation-free procurement act. “Imposing this burden on State vendors would drive them away from doing business with the State and put at risk important government operations,” she wrote in a memo accompanying the veto.

“This decision from the Governor sends a dangerous message that New York is not going to do its part,” bill sponsor Liz Krueger said in a statement.

“The bill is about using New York’s economic leverage, through its procurement, to require companies to change the way their supply chains impact tropical forests,” said Jeff Conant, director of the International Forests Program at Friends of the Earth and one of the bill’s architects.

The legislation’s global reach has drawn the attention of international environmental and human rights organizations, as well as indigenous leaders from regions where industrial agriculture endangers tropical forests.

“Despite our different contexts, we are united on a mission to stop deforestation in the world’s tropical forests — a critical effort to defend frontline communities, protect biodiversity, and curb the climate emergency,” wrote Krueger and the Ecuadorian indigenous leader Juan Carlos Jintiach in a joint September op-ed.

California’s legislature passed a similar bill in 2021, but Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed it, citing the “significant burden” it would create for small businesses to comply.

“New York is the place to watch,” said Vanessa Fajans-Turner, executive director of Environmental Advocates NY. “This is the biggest climate bill sitting on the governor’s proverbial desk.”

First proposed in 2021, the deforestation bill was amended this spring to exclude boreal forests from its protection after business groups and other entities, like the Metropolitan Transit Authority, raised concerns with the initial text. (The MTA declined to comment on its stance on the final legislation.)

Even in its narrowed form, the bill faced opposition from building material suppliers and other companies. The Empire State Forest Products Association, which represents landowners, lumber companies, and timber harvesters, warned of increased costs “from the bottom to the top of the supply chain.” Hochul’s staff have expressed concerns about the impact on small businesses.

But investors from firms managing more than $2.5 trillion in assets weighed in to support the legislation, arguing it would “provide investors with important information” on climate-related risks to their portfolios, as did more than two dozen companies that do business in the state and the New York Sustainable Business Council.

In the European Union, companies have begun to inspect their supply chains to comply with the new law before it takes effect at the end of 2024. Tony’s Chocolonely, a Dutch chocolate company founded by a journalist covering slave labor in the cocoa industry, told New York Focus it has paid farmers to map their land and verify the locations against protected forest data.