Following the repercussion of a report by Greenpeace International revealing JBS’s links to illegal deforestation and modern slavery, the company committed to eliminating deforestation from its cattle purchases in the Amazon. JBS signed the G4 Cattle Agreement (also known as the Public Livestock Commitment - CPP) pledging to exclude from its list of suppliers any ranches that deforested the Amazon rainforest after October 2009, as well as those that used labor analogous to slavery, operated on areas embargoed by IBAMA, or were located on Indigenous lands or in environmental conservation units. The deadline for beginning to exclude direct supplier farms was six months after signing the agreement, while the deadline for monitoring and excluding indirect suppliers was up to two years—i.e., from October 2011.

JBS, then Bertin, and other meatpackers operating in the Amazon signed a consent decree with the Brazilian Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF), which came to be known as the “Beef TAC”. The agreement was signed after the MPF of the state of Pará and Ibama— Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, the federal agency responsible for enforcing environmental laws and protecting natural resources in Brazil—filed lawsuits in Federal Court against individuals and companies accused of deforestation linked to cattle ranching in Pará. The commitments, which at the time were limited to the state, included not buying from farms with illegal deforestation, farms on the lists of embargoed areas and labor analogous to slavery maintained by the Federal Government, or farms that violated the rights of Indigenous peoples, quilombola communities, and traditional populations. The decree also required companies to share their list of accredited suppliers with the MPF. The commitment focused exclusively on direct suppliers, without taking into account indirect supplier farms, where most of the deforestation related to cattle ranching occurs. As published by the MPF in 2023, the results of the audits on the Pará consent decree show that JBS did not reach the levels of [...]