How JBS is still slaughtering the Amazon

Page 6

Taking stock – JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, is still slaughtering the Amazon

Globally, JBS is the biggest cog in the destructive industrial

operating illegally on protected Indigenous lands.19 Its suppliers

meat sector.13 So big is it that its operations have been

have also been implicated in modern-day slavery20 and its

estimated to produce around half the annual carbon emissions

slaughterhouses linked to unacceptable working conditions,21 mass

of fossil fuel giants such as ExxonMobil, Shell or BP.14

outbreaks of Covid-1922 and salmonella-tainted chicken exports.23

The scale of JBS’s environmental and social destruction became a global scandal in 2009, when Greenpeace International published

shareholders (via holding company J&F Investimentos) and senior

Slaughtering the Amazon. The investigation that report laid out

executives – are notorious for their historic systematic bribing of

exposed how the biggest names in the Brazilian cattle industry –

Brazilian politicians and public servants.24

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including JBS, then accounting for 10% of global beef production

old commitment through the G4 Cattle Agreement – JBS is

including some associated with recent and illegal deforestation and

backsliding on transparency measures for its cattle supply

modern-day slavery. The report revealed how ‘criminal or “dirty”

chains.25 Moreover, a recent investigation reports that JBS is not

supplies of cattle are “laundered” through the supply chain to an

merely turning a blind eye to its suppliers’ violations but has been

unwitting global market.’ In the months following its publication,

directly implicated in transporting deforestation-linked cattle to

JBS and the three other major processors in the Brazilian cattle

one of its own direct suppliers.26

is still Slaughtering the Amazon

sector signed the G4 Cattle Agreement, an undertaking to end

It is clear that JBS’s business model is incompatible with the

the purchase of cattle whose production is linked to Amazon

environmental emergency we are facing. According to Trase

deforestation, slave labour or the illegal occupation of Indigenous

data, as of 2017 (the most recent year for which data are readily

lands based on the demands made in the report. The agreement

available), approximately 30% of its beef exports from Brazil came

included a commitment to ensure fully transparent monitoring,

from the Amazon.27 Yet despite JBS’s ongoing failure to map out its

verification and reporting of the companies’ entire supply chains

supply chain with all the risks that entails, and continued reports of

(including indirect suppliers) within two years.

its links to deforestation and human rights abuses, the company’s

17

Eleven years on, JBS is still slaughtering the Amazon. It and its How

Despite its public claims of openness – and its decade-

– were linked to hundreds of ranches operating in the Amazon,

16

2

JBS and members of the Batista family – the company’s principal

global exports from Brazil are booming – JBS saw an increase in

network of subsidiaries have been repeatedly linked to suppliers

trade volume from Brazil of 40% between 2017 and 201928 and

found to be engaging in illegal deforestation in the region and

was responsible for around a third of Brazil’s beef exports in 2019.29

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Articles inside

Exploiting workers

2min
pages 78-79

Sowing sickness – spreading disease and pollution

3min
pages 76-77

Poor diet, poor health

6min
pages 80-85

What defines a resilient food economy?

1min
pages 86-87

Pile it high and sell it cheap

2min
pages 54-55

Poisoning the environment

1min
page 65

Breaking the climate budget and polluting our planet

2min
page 61

Devouring the land

5min
pages 62-64

Trampling the rights of Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities

0
pages 74-75

Risk factor: deforestation

11min
pages 36-43

Risk factor: human rights violations

20min
pages 44-53

The G4 Cattle Agreement– commitments a decade overdue

5min
pages 24-25

Risk factor: corruption

3min
pages 34-35

Covering its tracks – how leading processor JBS is backsliding on transparency commitments

15min
pages 26-33

High stakes – how industrial meat is taking us to the tipping point

3min
page 5

Buying blind – the market’s no-questions-asked approach to global commodities trade

18min
pages 16-23

Taking stock – JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, is still slaughtering the Amazon

2min
page 6

Big in the UK 2

2min
pages 12-15

Taking the bull by the horns – time for urgent action to transform the global food economy

6min
pages 8-11

Supporting destruction – supermarkets and fast food companies are bankrolling environmental collapse

2min
page 7
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