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
15
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
18
