A report by Global Witness revealed that JBS purchased cattle from 177 ranches linked to illegal deforestation in 2017 and another 231 in 2018, all located in the state of Pará. According to the organization, flawed assessments conducted by the international audit firms DNV GL and Grant Thornton incorrectly indicated that the company was in compliance with its commitments, failing to identify a significant number of cases involving supply from deforested areas.
J&F Investimentos, the holding company of JBS, agreed to pay a fine of USD 256 million to resolve the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation into violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). As described in the agreement reached, the company pleaded guilty and admitted to paying millions of dollars in bribes to public officials in Brazil in exchange for financing and other benefits for itself and its subsidiaries, thereby violating U.S. law.
The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministério Público Federal – MPF) indicted Joesley and Wesley Batista for their involvement in a corruption scheme involving the governor of Mato Grosso do Sul, Reinaldo Azambuja. According to the MPF, JBS allegedly paid R$67 million (around US$ 12 million at that time) in bribes to Azambuja and other defendants in exchange for tax exemptions and other benefits for the business group. The evidence was gathered during the Federal Police’s Operation Lama Asfáltica (“Asphalt Mud”), and the case is currently awaiting judgment in the Mato Grosso do Sul courts.
JBS may have been linked to up to 200,000 hectares of deforestation in its direct supply chain and 1.5 million hectares in its indirect supply chain in Brazil between 2008 and 2020, according to a conservative estimate by Chain Reaction Research. The consortium indicates that the actual figure could be even higher, as the estimate excludes two Amazonian states where JBS operates meatpacking plants.
HSBC stated that JBS “has no vision, action plan, timeline, technology, or solution” to monitor whether the cattle it purchases come from ranches involved in forest destruction, according to a report by The Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The report indicates that HSBC analysts said they had questioned the company “several times” about its plan to address deforestation but were dissatisfied with the responses they received.
Illegal pastures linked to the JBS production chain were identified in three protected areas of Rondônia, according to an investigation by Amnesty International. The organization revealed that, in 2019, JBS purchased cattle directly from a farm located within the Ouro Preto River Extractive Reserve, and also identified indirect suppliers operating in the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land and the Jacy-Paraná River Extractive Reserve.
A JBS truck appears to have transferred animals from a farm with a history of illegal deforestation to another with no record of environmental violations, according to an investigation by Repórter Brasil, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and The Guardian. The investigation indicates that the vehicle transported cattle from a property fined R$2.2 million (around US$ 1 million at the time the fines were issued) for illegal deforestation to a “clean” farm that supplied JBS meatpacking facilities.
Amnesty International revealed that a former JBS supply chain auditor denounced the company for falsely claiming that its operations in Brazil’s Amazon region are free of deforestation. In correspondence with Amnesty International, the independent auditor DNV GL Business Assurance—based in Norway and hired by JBS to audit its supply chain between 2017 and 2019—confirmed that it had never audited JBS’s indirect suppliers in Brazil. The company also stated that “the assessment report issued by DNV GL cannot be used as evidence of good practices throughout the supply chain.”
JBS violated the rights of Kaingáng Indigenous workers, according to a Public Civil Action filed by the Labor Prosecutor’s Office (Ministério Público do Trabalho – MPT). The company dismissed 40 Kaingáng individuals at once from the Seara meatpacking plant—a JBS subsidiary—in the city of Seara, Santa Catarina, during the escalation of Covid-19 cases. The mass dismissal included Indigenous workers who were under clinical monitoring, including pregnant women who were already on medical leave.
Farmers with properties inside the Ituna-Itatá Indigenous Land are among JBS’s indirect suppliers, according to a Greenpeace Brasil study. This Indigenous Land was the most deforested area in Brazil in 2019, and 94% of its territory is registered to private individuals through the Rural Environmental Registry (Cadastro Ambiental Rural – CAR), a self-declaratory system that has been used to give the appearance of legality to land ownership.
