Risk factor: human rights violations
Failure by JBS to map out its entire cattle supply chain,
work demanded reducing the worker to a state of
including indirect suppliers, exposes it to serious risk of
complete exhaustion, again putting health, safety and
trade from suppliers linked to human rights violations
life at risk).107
from land grabbing to slavery, and there is considerable
Since 1995, more than 50,000 people have
evidence that it has actually bought cattle from or
reportedly been rescued from slave labour in Brazil.108
originating with such suppliers – as laid out below.
The ‘Dirty List’ (Lista Suja) of slave labour is a database
The steady expansion of the industrial meat sector
created by the Brazilian government in 2003 that
– notably the rearing of cattle and the growing of
names the employers in cases where people have been
soya for feed – and the scale of land-use change are
rescued from conditions of slavery as defined by the
undermining the rights of Indigenous Peoples and other
Penal Code. Employers remain on the list for two years,
local communities in large areas of South America.
or – if they enter into a restitution agreement with the
While in Brazil these problems did not begin with President Bolsonaro, his tenure has certainly exacerbated them.
government – are moved to a watch list from which they may be removed after just one year.109 In May 2020 the Brazilian Ministry of the
For example, Bolsonaro’s government has
Economy added 41 new names to the 141 already
legitimised more than a hundred farms established
on the Dirty List. Most of the new offenders are
illegally inside Indigenous lands in the Brazilian
farmers or cattle ranchers; together, they have been
Amazon, putting the total area of Indigenous lands
found to have subjected 1,074 workers to conditions
occupied in this way at 250,000 ha
analagous to slavery.110
102
– about the
size of Luxembourg.103 Meanwhile, Bolsonaro
However, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic,
has not ratified a single new Indigenous territory
the Brazilian government has reduced the number of
since taking office at the start of 2019.104 There
agents undertaking inspections in the Amazon. This
is also fear that the current chaos of the global
reduction in oversight has been linked not only to
pandemic will be used as an opportunity by Brazil’s
increased deforestation rates but also to increased risk
government to further strip away protections for
of labour crimes.111
the Amazon and the rights of its Indigenous Peoples
105
– indeed, in May 2020 the country’s
In August 2019, President Bolsonaro defended changing the rules that define slave labour, mocking an
environment minister was videoed calling on the
inspection in which an employer was threatened with
government to take advantage of the media’s
a ‘tremendous fine’ for failing to provide a toilet: ‘Can’t
exclusive focus on the virus to bypass Congress and
you pee at the foot of the tree?’, the President asked.
push through environmental deregulation.
His speech came a week after federal police working
106
Slavery is another serious issue. According to
with labour inspectors had rescued 20 workers from
article 149 of Brazil’s Penal Code, slavery is defined
a farm where workers were found to be toiling from
by four elements: forced labour (which involves
5am to 5pm and sleeping in straw huts or under trees,
restricting the freedom to leave the employer), debt
and where no worker timesheet records were kept.
bondage (a form of enslavement linked to debts, often
According to the inspectors, ‘they bathed in a stream
fraudulent), degrading conditions (work that denies
that passes close to the community, with no guarantee
human dignity, putting health, safety and life at risk)
of privacy and in waters that are visibly inadequate for the
and/or an exhausting working day (the intensity of
cleanliness of the human body’.112
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