JBS has been the target of complaints filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for allegedly misleading investors about its animal welfare practices and its climate and environmental impacts. The complaint, filed by the Humane Society of the United States, alleges that although JBS and its subsidiary Pilgrim’s Pride claim to treat animals humanely, both source animals from factory farms where they are kept in cruel conditions and extreme confinement.
A farmer who used defoliating pesticides indirectly supplied cattle to JBS, according to a report by Mighty Earth. According to the report, environmental devastation on 11 of Claudecy Lemes’ farms in the Pantanal occurred due to the use of 25 different pesticides, including 2,4-D—one of the components of Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant used by the United States during the Vietnam War.
JBS employs tactics to delay, distract, and obstruct transformation of the food system—similar to those historically used by the tobacco and fossil fuel industries—according to a report by the Changing Markets Foundation. The organization notes that JBS spends more on advertising than on its efforts to achieve net-zero emissions, which accounted for just 0.03% of its annual revenue in 2022.
JBS was ranked as one of the “Terrible Trio” of the worst soy and cattle companies in the world in terms of deforestation by Mighty Earth. The organization indicates that the company is one of the leading drivers of deforestation among meatpackers and was possibly linked to the clearing of 118,310 hectares between February 2022 and July 2024—three-quarters of which occurred in the Amazon.
JBS had its supply chain contaminated by cattle originating from the Apyterewa Indigenous Land in Pará, which is considered the most deforested Indigenous territory in Brazil, according to an investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). Farms that sold cattle directly to JBS were traced back to the illegal breeding of animals within the Indigenous Land. The organization claims that this practice violates the agreements JBS signed with the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministério Público Federal – MPF), under which the company committed not to purchase cattle from properties involved in illegal deforestation, overlapping protected areas, or located within Indigenous Lands.
According to Mighty Earth, JBS’s environmental and climate commitments have been removed from the registry of the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), considered the “gold standard” for validating corporate climate goals. The organization indicates that the decision to exclude the company was made because it failed to present concrete plans for achieving its target of net-zero emissions by 2040.
As reported by Repórter Brasil, JBS USA, the U.S. arm of the Brazilian company, has financed studies conducted by public universities in the United States that downplay the role of livestock in climate change, according to research by Yale University and the University of Miami published in the scientific journal Climatic Change. The research concludes that this type of support is reportedly part of a broader strategy by the meat industry to hinder the adoption of climate policies that could negatively impact the sector, while seeking to positively influence public opinion.
The State Attorney General’s Office of Rondônia (PGE) has filed a lawsuit against JBS for the alleged direct purchase of 227 head of cattle from a ranch that raised livestock within the Jaci-Paraná Extractive Reserve (Resex), according to a report by A Pública and the Associated Press. The conservation unit is proportionally the most deforested in the Brazilian Amazon, with 80% of its area already devastated.
A study by Mighty Earth found that between 2009 and 2023, 12,474 farms in Brazil were responsible for the deforestation of 546,108 hectares. The destruction of native vegetation was linked by the study to 36 meatpacking plants—27 of which are owned by JBS.
JBS did not reach a satisfactory level in the first unified audit cycle of the Beef Terms of Adjustment of Conduct, in which procedures for verifying compliance with the agreement between meatpackers and the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministério Público Federal – MPF) were standardized across all companies. According to the MPF, the meatpacker recorded a 6.17% non-compliance rate in its cattle purchases in Pará, exceeding the 5% maximum allowed during that phase of the agreement. In Rondônia, the non-compliance rate reached 12%.
