Our recently published study shows that the top 10 European financial institutions are at risk of massively bankrolling illegal and legal deforestation for meat production in Brazil’s Amazon and Cerrado regions, thereby exacerbating climate change, biodiversity loss, public health risks and, often overlooked, global farm animal cruelty on a massive scale. Deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado is continuing – and even increasing –, bringing the region dangerously close to the tipping point beyond which rainforest will flip into savannahs. This will have devastating consequences for global and regional climate change, indigenous and local communities, biodiversity, the welfare of wild animals and agricultural production across South America. Deforestation and the related intensification of livestock production is one of the biggest risk factors for zoonotic epidemics and pandemics.