Covering its tracks – how leading processor JBS is backsliding on transparency commitments
‘ JBS closely monitors its suppliers for compliance in all aspects of our Responsible Procurement Policy and has not previously identified issues relating to human rights abuses of Indigenous communities or other protected groups. […] The traceability of the entire beef supply chain is an industry-wide challenge and a complex task.’ JBS right of reply to Amnesty International, July 2020
The weakness of the Brazilian industrial beef sector’s
society to check the farm names, coordinates,
efforts towards due diligence and transparency, and
ownership and other details of its direct suppliers
the limitations of the G4 Cattle Agreement’s voluntary
from which individual consignments of beef
approach, are exemplified by the country’s largest
originated.48 This allowed for cross-referencing
processor, JBS. On the one hand, there is strong
with official datasets and satellite imagery to
evidence that JBS has taken steps to exclude direct
verify whether the suppliers were compliant
cattle suppliers that are required to be excluded under
with its commitments under the agreement –
the terms of the agreement, such as those engaging
namely, freedom from deforestation, slave labour
in deforestation or forced labour. The company
or operations within embargoed, disputed or
claims to monitor its direct suppliers for deforestation
protected areas or Indigenous lands.
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via satellite imagery, and according to a company45
more and more cases of deforestation – including of
some 7,025 of the approximately 85,000 farms
Indigenous lands and Conservation Units – on farms
included on its suppliers list were blocked for cattle
from which JBS has sourced cattle, the company has
purchases due to noncompliance.
progressively decreased the comprehensiveness
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How
is still Slaughtering the Amazon
On the other hand, for all its enforcement
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Yet as civil society organisations have identified
commissioned 2019 audit, as of 31 December 2018,
and usefulness of the information presented on this
action against direct suppliers JBS has been
website. First, in 2015, it ceased to display the names
reneging on its key transparency pledge under the
and taxpayer identification numbers (Cadastros de
G4 Cattle Agreement to deliver a tracking system
Pessoas Físicas; CPFs)49 of farmers, while continuing
enabling monitoring, verification and reporting
to show geographical coordinates for the locations
of the origins of the cattle across its entire supply
of their farms. Since early 2019, according to
chain. First, it has been reducing the amount of
research by ((o))eco,50 it has stopped providing even
information it provides about its direct suppliers,
this information – geographical coordinates are still
making it increasingly difficult to independently
provided, but prove to be those of the capital of the
verify supplier compliance with its environmental
municipality where a company is registered rather
and human rights commitments. As part of the
than the farm itself, rendering them useless as a
agreement, JBS undertook to provide proof of this
means of verifying the farm of origin and thereby
compliance; to this end, it set up a ‘Guarantee of
confirming JBS’s avoidance of cattle linked to
origin’ website that enabled consumers and civil
deforestation or other abuses.
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