The world’s largest meat processor, JBS, and its leading competitors Marfrig and Minerva slaughtered cattle purchased from ranchers linked to the 2020 fires that destroyed one-third of the world’s largest inland wetland in the Pantanal region of Brazil, Greenpeace International reveals in a new report published today.
In Making Mincemeat of the Pantanal, the NGO names 15 cattle ranchers in the region that have recently supplied JBS, Marfrig and Minerva who own cattle ranches where more than 73,000 hectares burned between July 1 and October 27, 2020. That’s an area the half the size of Greater London. In many cases, the burn scar stretches far beyond the properties’ boundaries.
UK companies trading with JBS via its UK subsidiaries, include Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Burger King, MacDonald’s and KFC [1]. They continue to trade despite the fact that JBS is already notorious for scandals involving deforestation, illegalities and human rights abuses in the Amazon. [2]
Anna Jones, Head of Forests, Greenpeace UK said:
“The determination of supermarkets and fast food companies in the UK to continue trading with JBS is astounding. This is not about whether supermarkets sell Brazilian beef, it’s far bigger than that. It’s about Tesco, Sainsbury’s, M&S and others funding destruction of the natural world by trading with industrial meat giants.
“Scandal after scandal has linked JBS to some of the most harmful business practices imaginable in the Amazon. Now we have evidence of it ignoring the destruction of yet another of the world’s most important, wildlife-rich habitats. How much more environmental devastation do we need to witness before Tesco finally takes a lead and drops JBS for good?”
The 15 ranchers have supplied at least 14 meat processing facilities owned by JBS and the other two meat giants. Thirteen of the ranchers directly supplied one or more of the meat processors from a final approved farm that they owned.
Direct trade links have been identified from one or more of the meat processing facilities to customers including Burger King and McDonald’s, Danish Crown Group, Nestlé, Brazil’s Pão de Açúcar supermarket chain (a member of the French Casino Group) and Walmart-Chile.
Correspondence between Greenpeace International and JBS, Marfrig and Minerva in January 2021 established that at least 11 of the ranchers whose farms burned last year still own at least one farm from which direct supply of cattle is approved. Any other rancher may still supply cattle indirectly if it passes through one of these (or any other) approved farm.
The meat processors’ current approach to supply chain screening in the Pantanal focuses on the final supply ranch (one farm), without sufficiently considering either where the cattle has previously been or practices in the rancher’s other operations. This blinkered view enables the most transparent form of cattle laundering – the potential for ranchers to supply cattle from operations that violate law or company policy by passing them through intermediary approved ranches they also own before they are sent to slaughter.
Anna Jones continued:
“With Brazil’s agricultural sector seemingly allowed to ignore so much destruction without consequence, it’s clear the UK’s proposed supply chain legislation will do precious little to end deforestation. Unless legal deforestation is included in the rules, we might as well set fire to them too.”
Following two consecutive years of severe drought, 30% of the Brazilian Pantanal burned in 2020, including large portions of several Indigenous territories (at least 306,500 ha) and habitats of rare species (over 571,900 ha of protected areas). The total – some 4.49 million ha – represents an 84% increase in burned area over 2019 (2.44 million ha) [3].
Fire is commonly used to clear and prepare recently deforested land for cattle or other agriculture and official reports have found that nearly all of last year’s Pantanal fires were started by human activity. In many cases ranchers are suspected of starting fires deliberately, in defiance of official bans on use of fire introduced in July by regional governments and presidential decree [4]
Despite Greenpeace’s findings, all the meat processors asserted that all the ranches that had supplied them directly were compliant with their policy at the time of purchase. None of the meat processors gave any meaningful indication that it had reviewed its Pantanal supply base for deliberate use of fire. None indicated that it required ranchers to comply with its policy across their operations, despite Greenpeace findings of significant movement of cattle between operations owned by the same individual. Indeed, JBS has even publicly stated that it has no intention to exclude ranchers caught violating its decade-old commitments. [5] [6]
Images of the Pantanal fires and wildlife of the Pantanal available here: https://media.greenpeace.org/collection/27MDHUBIH3K
ENDS
Notes
[1] JBS has business interests in every continent except Antarctica – include Costco, KFC, Lidl, Mars, M&S, Nando’s, Nestlé, Pizza Hut, Sainsbury’s, Subway, Tesco, Princes, Walmart and YUM! In the UK, poultry and pork supplies Moy Park and Pilgrim’s Pride (formerly Tulip) are owned by JBS and trade with all major UK supermarkets and fast food companies.
Of the 531,101 tonnes of beef and beef products that the identified facilities exported from the Pantanal region between the beginning of President Bolsonaro’s term on 1 January 2019 and 31 October 2020, just 1,511 tonnes came directly into the UK.
[2] The scale of JBS’s environmental and social destruction became a global scandal in 2009, when Greenpeace International published, Slaughtering the Amazon, which exposed how JBS and other major players in the Brazilian beef industry were linked to hundreds of ranches in the Amazon, including some associated with illegal deforestation and other destructive practices, as well as modern-day slavery.
Following that report, in 2009, JBS and three of Brazil’s other big meat processors signed a voluntary commitment – the Cattle Agreement – to end the purchase of cattle whose production was linked to Amazon deforestation, slave labour or the illegal occupation of Indigenous lands and protected areas. The agreement included a commitment to ensure fully transparent monitoring, verification and reporting of the companies’ entire supply chains – including indirect suppliers – within two years to achieve zero-deforestation in its supply chain.
Despite that commitment, in the decade since, the company has continued to be linked to corruption, deforestation and human rights scandals, running up billions of dollars in fines for bribery, corruption and environmental damage.
[3] Data from: https://lasa.ufrj.br/news/burned-area-pantanal-2020/
[4] A federal moratorium was imposed on the use of burning for agricultural purposes in the Amazon and Pantanal in mid-July, extending for 120 days: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/scienceandhealth/2020/07/brazilian-government-bans-fires-in-the-amazon-and-pantanal-for-120-days.shtml
Regional prohibitions on dry-season burning were also put in place in Mato Grosso, from 1 July to 30 September, and Mato Grosso do Sul, extending for 180 days from late July: https://www.icv.org.br/website/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/characterization-of-areas-impacted-by-fires-in-mato-grosso.pdf
[5] The scale of JBS’s environmental and social destruction became a global scandal in 2009, when Greenpeace International published, Slaughtering the Amazon, which exposed how JBS and other major players in the Brazilian beef industry were linked to hundreds of ranches in the Amazon, including some associated with illegal deforestation and other destructive practices, as well as modern-day slavery.
Following that report, in 2009, JBS and three of Brazil’s other big meat processors signed a voluntary commitment – the Cattle Agreement – to end the purchase of cattle whose production was linked to Amazon deforestation, slave labour or the illegal occupation of Indigenous lands and protected areas. The agreement included a commitment to ensure fully transparent monitoring, verification and reporting of the companies’ entire supply chains – including indirect suppliers – within two years to achieve zero-deforestation in its supply chain.
Despite that commitment, in the decade since, the company has continued to be linked to corruption, deforestation and human rights scandals.
[6] Food Navigator, 22 February 2021: JBS doubles down on deforestation as Greenpeace denounces ‘five more years of inaction’
Marcio Nappo, Sustainability Director at JBS Brasil, reported statements: “Right now, we’re not going to block them [rogue suppliers], we’re going to try to help them solve the issue. Sometimes it’s paperwork, sometimes they need to put together a conservation plan, sometimes they need to reforest part of their property. We are going to help them and we’re hiring people to help these suppliers.”
“We think excluding the property and the supplier is a negative approach. It won’t solve the problem because they’ll go to the next meat packer and try and sell it. We don’t want that because it won’t address the issue.”
