(Adds European farm group statement) BRASILIA, July 9 (Reuters) - European competitors are trying to undermine Brazil's biofuels production by raising environmental concerns, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Monday. Brazil is the world's largest exporter of ethanol and also a pioneer in developing biodiesel. It launched a program to fuel cars with ethanol derived from sugar cane 30 years ago. "We have adversaries that will make up any kind of slander against the quality of ethanol and biodiesel," Lula said on his weekly radio show. Lula, who spoke at a biofuels conference in Brussels last week, was asked about reports in European newspapers that said biofuels could contribute to deforesting the Amazon. "I told them the Portuguese, who arrived in 1500, introduced sugar cane 470 years ago and it didn't reach the Amazon for a simple reason -- the temperature isn't suitable," Lula said on the show Breakfast with the President. The United States and Brazil signed an accord in March to jointly promote biofuel production in South America and Africa. Sugar cane plantations are growing fast as a result of strong domestic and international demand for ethanol, raising concerns they could encroach on native forests. Brazil has also denied ethanol production would drive up food prices, saying it had large amounts of unused arable land. In Europe and the United States biofuel production costs far more than in Brazil and is highly subsidized. "Brazil should not be afraid of this debate, we won't again accept the cartel of the powerful trying to stop Brazil from developing," Lula added. The bulk of Brazil's sugar cane production is in Sao Paulo and other south-eastern states. Plants for biodiesel are grown further north, including in the Amazon region. Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes said last week Brazil would adopt new environmental standards for sugar cane planting within two or three years. A European farmers group on Monday kept up its criticism of Brazil's biofuels industry, saying it gained from poor social and environmental standards "as shown by the slavery in plantations in the Amazon in Brazil". Brazilian authorities often find labourers working under inhumane conditions on farms and last week freed more than 1,000 workers on an Amazon sugarcane plantation. Brazil launched a national plan to eradicate slave-like working conditions in 2002. In a statement, the COPA-COGECA group called for the European Union to limit biofuels imports to 7 percent of production within the bloc, saying that would be line with U.S. restrictions. Last week, EU trade chief Peter Mandelson angered European farm groups by saying Brussels should favour the greenest fuels available regardless of whether they were produced in Europe, and that the EU's high import tariffs might need to be cut.
