Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders Complete digital access to quality analysis and expert insights complemented with our award-winning Weekend Print edition Terms & Conditions apply Discover all the plans currently available in your country See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times On the flat green pastures of Brazil’s Mato Grosso state ranchers are witnessing firsthand what happens when the biggest cattle buyer stumbles used to buy almost half of the Mato Grosso cattle headed for slaughterhouses But since the company’s owners admitted taking part in a sweeping corruption scheme its finances have been squeezed and purchases have plunged JBS no longer offers cash upon delivery of animals and instead asks to pay ranchers as much as 30 days later Producers say they fear not getting paid for the cattle delivered to JBS especially with banks asking ranchers for additional guarantees on loans made against expected sales to the company no payment delays by JBS have been reported so far JBS also is seeking to refinance part of its debt with lenders in Brazil amid tighter credit conditions “If the banks aren’t providing credit to JBS “A lot of producers are only making punctual sales The slowdown in demand has sent cattle prices plunging since mid-May when news broke that JBS’s controlling shareholders said they paid bribes to help fund a $20 billion acquisition spree over the past decade The company’s shares and bonds plunged and now it plans to divest about 6 billion reais ($1.8 billion) of assets including stakes in a Brazilian dairy supplier and a U.K Cattle futures in Sao Paulo have fallen 17 percent this year While there’s no available data on JBS production the company has enough cattle inventory for three days of slaughtering said in a telephone interview from Sao Paulo Before the Batista brother’s plea bargain became public rivals were operating with similar inventories level JBS is using about 80 percent of its slaughtering capacity the Sao Paulo-based company said in an emailed response to questions JBS said it set its payment policy to 30 days in accordance with national standards citing BM&FBovespa futures contracts as an example It said all the payments based on this new standard have been made “The current value of cattle is directly related to market cycles in which a greater supply of cattle for slaughter added to a drop in domestic consumption,” JBS said “That downward trend has been predicted by several analysts since last year.” Adding to the pressures on the industry is a U.S which revived food safety concerns that led to a similar halt to shipments in March and had already sent cattle prices down earlier this year in the country Business is getting so slow that some ranchers say they are leaving cattle in the pasture rather than selling to meatpackers or placing them on feedlots where the animals normally spend three months eating grain rather than grass to get bigger before they are sent for slaughter producers simply can’t profit from a feedlot operation,” said Alberto Pessina With winter arriving this month in the Southern Hemisphere keeping the animals on pastures may not last Cold and dry weather may force ranchers to sell animals at low prices because there isn’t enough grass for them to eat have been able to shift sales to regional beef processors or JBS rivals including Marfrig Global Foods SA and Minerva SA but none are big enough to absorb all that excess cattle “A lot of ranchers keep selling to JBS simply because they don’t have any other option,” Caiado said JBS now controls 25 percent of the slaughtering capacity in Brazil Some ranchers say the processing industry has become too concentrated over the past decade has long complained that JBS’s tight control over the industry posed serious risks for local producers after JBS had made several acquisitions in the region Acrimat sent a formal complaint to Brazil’s antitrust regulator but it was dismissed A prolonged period of reduced purchases by JBS could hurt Brazil’s beef exports was expected to boost shipments this year by 6 percent exports were expected to rise for the first time in two years it’s likely that investments in Brazilian cattle-raising will be delayed or reduced,” Ferraz said and the country could lose competitiveness in the global market in the long term.” which became the world’s biggest chicken and beef producer by gobbling up producers in the U.S has seen its borrowing costs skyrocket in recent weeks The yield on its $1 billion bond due in 2020 almost doubled from 6.38 percent before the scandal erupted on May 17 to as high as 12.64 percent on June 12 Troubles for the top producer has opened the door for Sao Paulo-based Minerva and Marfrig to regain market share an analyst at Scot consultancy in Bebedouro municipality JBS’s rivals have reduced overall idle time in recent weeks Minerva confirmed it will reopen a plant in Mato Grosso in mid-July while Marfrig said it’s mulling opportunities in Brazil ranchers may continue to hold off on selling their cattle until prices rebound or JBS starts paying in cash again Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information Ranchers herd cattle on a farm in Xinguara the deforestation caused by cattle ranching in the Amazon Rainforest was of no concern to livestock farmers buyers and consumers know the link between cattle and Brazilian Amazon devastation ignoring the problem has become a business risk “We can produce more with fewer natural resources reconciling food and climate security,” Francisco Victer accepts this improvement is necessary for the current scenario.” One of the topics discussed at the “fat cattle capital” was cattle tracking which experts point to as the primary tool for curbing deforestation from ranching The individual identification of 100% of the Brazilian herd is far away a series of recent decisions by different players in the meat chain shows the quest for traceability is progressing In March 2023, the Brazilian Bank Federation (FEBRABAN) approved new rules for releasing credit to meatpackers and slaughterhouses in Amazonian states Banks that adhere to the protocol must require their clients to comply with measures to combat deforestation Among the requirements is implementing a traceability and monitoring system that will make it possible to demonstrate that the cattle bought are not associated with illegal deforestation The measure doesn’t apply only to direct suppliers but also to indirect — the leading promoters of deforestation The tracking system must consider environmental embargoes invasion of protected areas and Indigenous lands the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) status and cases of slave labor associated with the farms “We haven’t established a technology for the traceability but banks are going to demand a transparent auditable model from their clients,” Amaury Martins de Oliva consumer relations and self-regulation at Febraban a platform that monitors deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in real time using high-resolution satellite images The meat industry expects to conduct an in-depth check of the cattle it buys in the Amazon with the initiative ensuring that animals raised on illegally deforested farms on grabbed lands or with the exploitation of workers don’t enter slaughterhouses “Every industry that exports meat in Brazil will follow these same procedures,” Lisandro Inakake de Souza project coordinator at the NGO Institute of Forest and Agricultural Management and Certification (Imaflora) “The sector needs a system allowing herd traceability.” Imaflora developed the “Boi na Linha” program based on the so-called Meat TAC a deal conducted by the Federal Public Ministry in 2009 to force ranchers to comply with regulations “There is a lot of work to be done to achieve traceability of indirect suppliers It’s an urgent discussion we can’t put off any longer,” Souza said Of the 39 beef companies associated with ABIEC including the country’s three largest meatpackers — JBS the goal is to have all 39 companies in the agreement within two years guaranteeing the beef’s lawful origin on 98% of Brazilian exports “The meat processing industry is being pushed toward traceability solutions because it could lose markets and funding,” Paulo Barreto a researcher at Imazon (the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment) The European bill to ban imports of deforestation-linked commodities and other movements against illegal deforestation even made the powerful Brazilian Agriculture and Livestock Confederation (CNA) recognize the problem and propose a traceability model to the federal government In May 2023, the leading agribusiness representative proposed to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply the creation of a free public platform for individual cattle traceability cattle producers could join voluntarily within eight years — an extended deadline in the face of the climate emergency Another questionable point is that there would be no guarantee the platform’s data would be made transparently to facilitate inspection “The CNA has shown that it is being pressured but I don’t think it will be able to solve the problem with the necessary urgency,” Pedro Burnier a member of the NGO Amigos da Terra and coordinator of the Indirect Supplier Work Group “Farmers aren’t in such a hurry because most of the meat is produced in the country which makes international pressure relative.” the devastation could be halved by scaling up the implementation of supply chain monitoring especially by identifying and eliminating suppliers that produce cattle in recently deforested areas The ideal model for guaranteeing complete tracking of the beef supply chain would be individual traceability since birth Argentina and other meat exporting countries this is a GPS-enabled ear tag with a chip storing information on the animal’s origin and transport history Brazil has only 4 million identified steers out of 200 million animals — 2% of the herd The vast majority of steers with individual chips come from breeders who see the benefits of the technology which is not restricted to controlling deforestation — traceability systems help improve herd management and represent only 0.5% of the production cost In August 2023, in another step toward traceability, the governor of Pará state, Helder Barbalho, announced it would implement the country’s first individual cattle tracing program by 2023 it’s hard to imagine the initiative being replicated quickly in other parts of the Brazilian Amazon “Individually chipping 100% of the herd is a long-term solution which in the future should become a market requirement so we need to look for alternatives to reduce deforestation linked to cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon now,” said Burnier who is working to unite different links in the meat chain to find traceability solutions Experts unanimously point to a provisional solution capable of reducing illegal deforestation based on cross-referencing from inter-ranch cattle transport data registered by the Animal Transit Guides (GTA) and land record information from the CAR The recommendation is to focus this cross-check primarily on properties in critical areas of illegal deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest cross-referencing this data to solve the most serious problem while moving forward with an individual tracking mechanism,” said Imazon’s Barreto Brazilian authorities need a steady hand to approve pro-transparency measures that enable cross-checking of this information “It has to start by cleaning up those who are most wrong generating not only environmental damage but also a lot of violence,” he said Cattle farmers and even the agriculture ministry resist using the GTA arguing that animal transport guides should only be used for health purposes Each Brazilian state has its own GTA database that is usually kept secret because data protection laws limit transparency and the possibility of integration with other information banks Pará state, thanks to researchers from the Center for Territorial Intelligence (CIT), has created a platform that accesses GTAs to make a socioenvironmental diagnosis of farms while preserving information considered personal and confidential to producers It’s a way of circumventing the main argument put forward by farmers against the monitoring with transport guides The problem occurs in many parts of the Brazilian Amazon “It’s still difficult to trace the indirect producer The Indirect Suppliers Working Group has developed tools to cross-reference GTA and CAR but this is restricted to states that provide information We need access to GTA and CAR databases so everyone can cross-reference them,” Burnier said Experts also say partial traceability could be achieved with a centralized transparent and up-to-date traceability platform maintained by the federal government combining information from different agencies build risk-based strategies and centralize the logic of traceability with the federal government playing a leading role in monitoring properties providing the sector with data to make purchasing decisions An interministerial initiative must emerge within the government to coordinate actions on the different fronts,” Imaflora’s Souza said After receiving proposals from different parts of the sector, including CNA, the agriculture ministry is working on a new mechanism for the individual traceability of cattle in Brazil. According to the environmental news outlet ((o))eco and the platform model still needs to be defined Experts fear the proposal will only consider farmers’ demands Mongabay has tried to contact the ministry for two months but hasn’t received answers to questions sent by email CNA also declined to talk to Mongabay about its tracking proposal “The government needs to know who it will serve The ministry of agriculture is under much pressure from the farmers which means doing nothing toward the environmental side The government lacks leadership,” Barreto said Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change told Mongabay by email that the new Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm) aims to “develop traceability systems for agricultural products in the Amazon.” However the ministry led by Marina Silva has yet to say whether it is actively working on the platform being developed or whether it will take environmental demands into account “If the private sector doesn’t support the actions It’s up to the private sector to push the government and Congress,” said Barreto the ones driving this movement are the meatpackers themselves who are already under commercial and credit pressure knowing that this will need to be resolved soon which is also pressured by European laws.” director of sustainability and corporate communications at Marfrig wrote in an email to Mongabay that adopting monitoring and traceability technologies is one of the pillars of a program launched in 2020 to make the supply chain 100% deforestation-free the company monitors 80% of its indirect suppliers in the Brazilian Amazon focusing on geographical areas with greater socioenvironmental risk He wrote that Marfrig defends crossing of GTA and CAR until the country has full traceability Minerva Foods said it had launched an app to monitor indirect suppliers giving farmers the possibility to consult information about their chain The company said there was an opportunity to improve animal traceability from source through GTAs complete traceability of the meat chain went beyond industry initiatives and required the involvement of the government JBS wrote to Mongabay that it had been monitoring its more than 70,000 direct suppliers for almost 15 years having blocked 12,000 farms for non-compliance with the company’s socio-environmental standards only suppliers registered on its traceability platform would be able to trade with the company the “fat cattle capital,” Francisco Victer from Pará’s Beef Alliance sees these moves as an investment “We need to show we are committed to conservation by producing in an improved and correct way,” he said “The decision to improve practices must come from the producers themselves Banner image: Cattle in Pará state. Image by A C Moraes via Flickr (CC BY 2.0) How the Amazon’s ‘greatest devastator’ sold cattle to a Carrefour supplier Levy, S. A., Cammelli, F., Munger, J., Gibbs, H. K., & Garrett, R. D. (2023). Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon could be halved by scaling up the implementation of zero-deforestation cattle commitments. Global Environmental Change, 80, 102671. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102671 FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post The “fortress conservation” model is under pressure in East Africa as protected areas become battlegrounds over history and global efforts to halt biodiversity loss Mongabay’s Special Issue goes beyond the region’s world-renowned safaris to examine how rural communities and governments are reckoning with conservation’s colonial origins and trying to forge a path forward […] Daniel Dantas has been the bad boy of Brazilian finance for a long time he fueled national outrage with a giant telecom acquisition in the 1990s feuded publicly with his business partners at Citigroup Inc for years and then was caught up in a nationwide corruption scandal in 2008 thrown in jail briefly and his fund forced to temporarily give up some assets Dantas is betting on a big comeback -- as a cattle rancher The Opportunity Fund investment firm he co-founded is said by industry insiders to own more ranch land -- about 500,000 hectares -- than any other company in Brazil and is considering reviving an initial offering for the business Dantas is weighing additional investments into artificial intelligence technology that he qualifies for the Bloomberg Billionaires Index for the first time A new analysis of his finances puts his wealth at $1.8 billion who has long guarded his assets in complex entities With his sister Veronica and longtime partner Dorio Ferman he controls funds that manage a record 26 billion reais ($8 billion) in assets more than double the amount it had when he was arrested a decade ago That includes about 4.5 billion reais the authorities unfroze last July Brazil’s courts annulled the case and freed Dantas of his 10-year sentence About 700 people squat on Opportunity’s land demanding ownership and the fund’s cattle unit is accused of illegally raising cattle on embargoed lands that were illicitly deforested before the fund acquired them He owes his new aggressiveness in part to the fact that he has emerged unscathed in the so-called Carwash corruption scandal that ravaged many other Brazilian tycoons As Latin America’s so-called leftist Pink Tide recedes Dantas no longer faces pressure from the weakened Worker’s Party of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva “Dantas is taking advantage of a frail moment for the worker’s party,” said Sergio Lazzarini a professor at Insper business school in Sao Paulo Dantas hails from an illustrious Brazilian clan of magnates and politicians His great-great grandfather was Cicero Dantas Martins a rancher and nobleman in the state of Bahia a poor region that has long been run by oligarchs After managing money for a wealthy banker in Rio joined with Ferman to found Opportunity Fund in 1994 It eventually grew into a series of funds that buy companies and manage money for individuals and institutions He made his riches and reputation as a financial wheeler-dealer in the wave of privatizations of state-owned companies It’s also where he landed in serial controversies with partners His Opportunity Fund led a consortium including Telecom Italia and Citibank to pick up behemoth Brasil Telecom in the 1990s But Opportunity and Telecom Italia had a falling out followed a few years later by a rift with Citi which would become telecom giant Oi SA in a merger Things got a lot worse that same year in a police operation Dantas was arrested twice and held for a few nights for trying to bribe a police officer to keep his name out of the investigation but Dantas managed to get the case annulled in a series of legal moves He even turned the tables on the police investigator who spearheaded the probe after a stint as a Communist party lawmaker is living in Switzerland and fighting a Brazilian arrest order connected to his two-year sentence for violating secrecy rules A boy watches a landless occupant farmer gather cattle at Agropecuária Santa Bárbara Xinguara SA Maria Bonita farm Brazil’s high court upheld a judge’s decision to annul the Satiagraha case The ruling came after the habeas corpus to release Dantas was criticized by 45 prosecutors as a “shameless affront to Brazil’s democratic institutions’’ and blasted by more than 130 judges for skipping due process rules according to letters published in local press Dantas also went on the offensive against Citi In a federal suit filed in February in New York he alleged that the bank conspired with Brazilian officials to wrest his interest in the telecom company a decade ago He said he was punished for resisting the party’s shakedowns for campaign money Citi said in a motion to dismiss the complaint that Dantas is trying to rehash old allegations that lack evidence Opportunity’s Baratinha mine in Minas Gerais state became operational and is now producing about 2 million tons of iron ore a year cash flow that is financing eight other mining projects including for gold according to a person familiar with the business who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the matter Opportunity’s booming cattle enterprise in Para state called Agropecuaria Santa Barbara Xinguara SA now encompasses grazing lands nearly the size of Delaware Two dozen Santa Barbara ranches that were seized years earlier in the Satiagraha case were unfrozen by a judge starting in 2012 it took almost an hour to drive with a Santa Barbara executive across one of the vast ranches where wranglers wore shirts that bear a fund slogan: “attitude of ownership.’’ But the ranches are a reminder of how controversy seems to follow Dantas Members of the Landless Worker’s movement have occupied two Santa Barbara ranches for about nine years and the company executive declined to visit the site to avoid potential confrontations with squatters The squatters are protesting unequal land distribution in Brazil’s vast interior One percent of agricultural land owners control half the farmland A charred house is seen at Agropecuária Santa Bárbara Xinguara SA Cedro Farm in Maraba “There is so much concentrated in the hands of a few like Dantas,” said Pedro Pereira da Silva a former waiter who is one of about 700 people squatting at a Santa Barbara ranch Santa Barbara has been in talks to sell two of the ranches to the government so the squatters can stay is more than double the amount Santa Barbara originally paid about a decade ago but at least it would free the vegetarian cattle king from yet another years-long public controversy * Translation of Greenpeace Brazil’s report on 2 October 2020. Many of the ranchers who set fire to the Amazon in the coordinated action of last year’s fires already had a history of environmental crimes and remain unpunished Are they “indigenous and small holders burning for their subsistence” as Bolsonaro stated in his speech at the 75 UNGA in New York in September this year fires in the Amazon are fueled by the economic interest of large cattle ranchers and fanned by Brazilian slaughterhouses we highlight the case of three farms that had fire hot spots registered on the days when the ‘Day of Fire’ occurred in 2019 and that in addition to not having received any punishment for these fires so far Some of these ranchers even continue to burn their properties illegally and perpetuate the tragic devastation seen since last year and tainting livestock production and supply chains within the domestic and international markets At the center of so much destruction is president Jair Bolsonaro’s government anti environmental agenda and industrial meat which production continues to expand over nature making it the biggest driver of deforestation worldwide Fazenda Bacuri occupies 1,117.88 ha and is registered to Emílio Carlos Nogueira Batagin The property was fined over R$ 2 million (US$ 613,000 at the time) for the illegal deforestation of 725.88 hectares which remains under the Brazilian government agency Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis; IBAMA) embargo list. IBAMA’s list includes farms that have breached environmental legislation such as the Brazilian Forest Code – eg by carrying out illegal deforestation – and that are prohibited (embargoed) from producing in a specified area of their land holding (which may comprise the whole farm or only part of it) until they regularise their situation for example through payment of a fine and land restoration Is it also illegal to purchase from embargoed areas illegal fires were recorded within Fazenda Bacuri between 10 and 29 of August 2019 These fires were set within the embargoed areas of the farm Fire hotspots were recorded elsewhere in the farm Cattle from Fazenda Bacuri were traded onto farms supplying JBS’ slaughterhouse in Marabá until at least April 2020 Fazenda Bacuri recorded fire hotspots within its area under embargo also in August 2020 and elsewhere Cattle raised on the Bacurí farm arrived indirectly at JBS through the Porangaí farm whose owner is on the Ministry of Economy’s Dirty List of Slave Labor The two connections are clear violations of the public commitments made by the slaughterhouse in 2009 · July 2019: Satellite image shows the embargoed area in the process of regeneration creating secondary forest · August 2019: Satellite detects 7 hotspots in the embargoed area during the month The regular spacing of the fires indicates that the fires are planned and deliberate. · August 2020: Satellite detects another 5 illegal fire hotspots in the embargoed area and this is also despite the new 120 day ban on fires in the Amazon by the Federal Government that was announced on July 16 Most of the fire hotspots were detected on August 6th Again the pattern indicates the fires are planned and deliberate. as well as the other major processors in the Brazilian cattle sector an undertaking to end the purchase of cattle whose production is linked to Amazon deforestation slave labour or the illegal occupation of Indigenous lands Such move followed Greenpeace’s investigation that laid out how the biggest names in the Brazilian cattle industry – including JBS then accounting for 10% of global beef production – were linked to hundreds of ranches operating in the Amazon including some associated with recent and illegal deforestation and modern-day slavery When a rural producer enters the Slave Labour Dirty List and according to the 2009 commitments by JBS and the other slaughterhouses the producer is ‘blocked’ – not the specific rural property where slave labour was uncovered – so that producer is prevented from supplying the slaughterhouses According to Greenpeace Brazil’s investigation already listed in the government’s Slave Labour Dirty List sold a hundred animals from Fazenda Turmalina to cattle rancher Maurício Pompeia Fraga supplied JBS with animals ready for slaughtering at its plant in Marabá in 2020 Despite JBS’s commitment to end the trade in cattle linked to slave labour the animals Lucena supplied into JBS’s supply chain went unnoticed This illustrates the risk of JBS lacking control over its entire supply chain and breaking its decade long promise. Over 38% of JBS exports from Marabá between August 2019 and July 2020 went to Hong Kong Located in the municipality of São Félix do Xingu this cattle ranch is registered as owned by Reginaldo Leandro da Silva is listed as “pending” in the National Rural Environmental Registry System of Pará (Sicar) with the self reported registration being not fully validated This means that land claims may overlap with public Fazenda São José participated in the day of the fire in 2019 While Fazenda São José has not been fined nor embargoed and also hasn’t burned in 2020 has however been fined for R$ 955.000 for illegal deforestation and two embargoes areas have been registered under his name These embargoed areas belong within Fazenda Matão however located next to and connected to Fazenda São José SICAR register shows it as owned by Reginaldo’s mother This suggests possible movements and laundering of cattle from one property to the other. Greenpeace documented cattle was grazing in both farms Different from many other cases of farms with deforestation entering the Brazilian meat packers supply chain indirectly which took part in the Day of fire in 2019 is a direct supplier to both JBS and Marfrig at their slaughterhouses in Tucumá This demonstrates again the slaughterhouse’s broken promises in the Cattle Agreement and lack of compliance with the Terms of Adjustment of Conduct (TAC) that each slaughterhouse signed with the Federal Public Ministry in relevant states and which were legally binding Although the TACs are not able to prohibit legal Amazon deforestation which is beyond the Federal Public Ministry’s remit their other criteria are similar to those of the G4 Cattle Agreement over 92% of JBS’ beef exports and about 37% of Marfrig’s exports from Tucumá went to Hong Kong According to export data supplied by the Brazilian Government in 2019 Hong Kong imported 332,683 tonnes of beef from Brazil of which 49% came from the legal Amazon Shipment data indicate that around 60% of Brazilian beef exports to Hong Kong are exported by JBS Marfrig or Minerva of which around a third is from plants inside the Amazon biome. Located in the municipality of Altamira in the State of Pará Fazenda Santa Rosa has a total of 1,462 ha under embargo The embargo was put in place in 2015 and the property’s owner with fines for R$ 5.7 million because of illegal deforestation The rancher was convicted by the State of Pará’s Justice in March 2020 and ordered to pay R$ 100.000 for damage and fines for litigation in bad faith in addition to the R$ 4.5 million for the illegal logging and the consequent illicit income Edson Teófilo Rosa was also required to regenerate 742.31 hectares of forests within a year None of this stopped Edson and his partners from continuing to burn land or sell cattle deforestation within the farm amounted to 1,035 ha DETER system shows that between August and September 2019 while 17 hectares were cleared within one of the embargoed areas in August 2019 the farm had record fire hot spots in its interior. Cattle grazed in Fazenda Santa Rosa contaminated the supply chain and may have supplied JBS’s slaughterhouse Santana do Araguaia in two ways: through Fazenda MAANAIM and through Fazenda São Sebastião both direct suppliers of JBS in Santana do Araguaia 70% of the beef exported from the JBS slaughterhouse in Santana do Araguaia was destined for Hong Kong Countries like Angola and Egypt also received animals from this plant. Greenpeace East Asia in Hong Kong wrote to the main retail chains in the Hong Kong’s market regarding Brazilian meat and deforestation While the chains Yata and City’super replied that “they rarely sold Brazilian meat” one of the two largest supermarket chains in the region said that it acquired a “small portion” of meat from JBS JBS responds the same: that the company is doing everything in its power to ensure that its supply chain is not linked to cattle grazed in deforested areas In response to criticism from environmentalists JBS made an announcement about the company’s new approach to deforestation in the Amazon it will control suppliers one step before their direct suppliers Nothing but a ‘déjà vu’ feeling Greenpeace exposed how JBS was slaughtering the Amazon Back then the company already promised to solve the problem and drop deforestation from its supply chain within two years JBS enjoys the luxury of extending the obligation to map its supply chain for another five years in an attempt to appease its investors It will be another five years in which JBS will continue to turn a blind eye to deforestation illegality and human rights abuses in its production chain control the totality of indirect cattle suppliers that feed into its supply chain Nor is it doing anything regarding the footprint of the sector on other irreplaceable biomes such as the Cerrado savanna grasslands and the Pantanal wetlands both critical for climate and biodiversity But JBS is not the only large Brazilian slaughterhouse repeatedly linked to deforestation It is an entire sector that has done little or almost nothing to change the way business is done in the Amazon About 80% of deforested areas in the Amazon are occupied by cattle The case presented here, along with so many others recently published by Greenpeace and several other organizations clearly shows that the business model of the largest slaughterhouses on the planet is incompatible with the environmental emergency we are facing Greenpeace organized the “Save Our Lantau ” Photo Collection and Contest 2021and more than 300 people participated The 700 photo entries received for the contest show how stunning and precious Lantau is We invited 12 winners of the contest to share with us their unique stories about Lantau The protagonist of the latest from the ‘Let's Talk About Climate Change’ series is a Hong Kong wildlife photographer living in the city for 30 years who has decided to move his home base to England Please select which cookies you are willing to store These cookies will provide you a better experience of our website and help us to improve the performance of Greenpeace.org You will be able to hide the cookies acceptance banner and use the website features better We will also use these cookies to collect statistical and anonymised data such as how long users stay on a page or which links are clicked In addition to the cookies and technologies described above we also use other services that will help us to enhance your experience on this website We also may permit certain third party companies (e.g Google) cookies to help us understand more about our users specific behavior Those cookies help us to understand how visitors interact with our website (e.g pages visited) in order to improve visitors experience operation effectiveness of this platform and our communication strategies A machine creates a pile of corn grain for cattle feed at the Agropecuaria Santa Barbara Xinguara SA Espirito Santo farm in Maraba The Opportunity Fund investment firm's cattle enterprise is said to own more ranch land -- about 500,000 hectares -- than any other company in Brazil About 700 people squat on Opportunity’s land demanding ownership and equal land distribution in Brazil's vast interior 2017 at 11:09 AM EDTBookmarkSaveLock This article is for subscribers only.The world’s biggest corn exporters are preparing for a showdown Brazilian farmers are in the midst of collecting their biggest corn harvest ever and American supplies are also plentiful -- setting the stage for a stiff battle to win world buyers in the second half of the year A 24.7-million-real fine was not enough for JBS to stop buying cattle from companies that contribute to destroy the Amazon. Despite being punished by Operation Cold Meat for illegal practices in 2017 Seara and Swift brands continues sourcing cattle from farms involved in deforestation according to a joint investigation by Brazilian news agency Repórter Brasil British newspaper The Guardian and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and found cattle being raised in a deforested area embargoed by IBAMA – which is an environmental crime The area is part of the Lagoa do Triunfo ranch which has been fined for illegal deforestation and is part of the Agro SB group formerly known as Santa Bárbara Xinguara and controlled by banker Daniel Dantas Lagoa do Triunfo transferred hundreds of cattle to another ranch belonging to the same business group but which had no environmental liability Then the cattle were sold for slaughter at JBS’s meatpacking units This is not the first time that JBS supplier Agro SB is involved in environmental or labour law violations. In 2012, a ranch belonging to the group was caught using labour ‘analogous to slavery’ A worker has been reported murdered inside a ranch belonging to the group – allegedly for demanding his labour rights – and Prosecutors are investigating the company for land grabbing Agro SB’s environmental history of is also bad the group has been fined 70.4 million reais by IBAMA for illegal deforestation in the last 10 years A Lagoa do Triunfo employee said he was aware of noncompliance with environmental regulations as he knew that cattle grazed in embargoed areas ‘We can’t cut the vegetation’ [in embargoed areas] said the employee whose name will not be revealed to avoid retaliation ‘The vegetation grows and then we work with the cattle inside them.’ The embargoes are imposed by IBAMA as a measure to recover deforested areas – therefore any economic activity is banned in the land They also serve as punishment to ranchers who do not comply with the law since they often fail to pay environmental fines Any economic activity in areas under embargo is subject to fines of up to 1 million reais according to Presidential Decree 6514 of 2008 raising cattle in areas under embargo reveals a scheme that consists of livestock relocations amongst different ranchs in order to obscure the true origin of the cattle then they are sent to a ‘clean’ ranch without environmental liabilities from where they will be sold to meatpacking companies Public documents on animal transportation consulted by the reporters reveal that Agro SB transferred at least 296 cattle from the Lagoa do Triunfo ranch to the Espírito Santo ranch Espírito Santo sold at least 1,977 cattle from July to December to two JBS meatpacking units in the state of Pará Other consignments were made by Espírito Santo in January 2019 when 936 cattle were sold to JBS’s meatpacking unit in Redenção Transferring cattle from one ranch to another for fattening is common practice in the industry but it makes it difficult for companies to monitor their indirect suppliers and keep their commitments not to source cattle from farms involved in deforestation A JBS statement said that ‘the facts pointed out do not meet the standards’ adopted by the company It stated that it does not purchase animals from ranches involved in deforestation agrarian conflicts and labour ‘analogous to slavery’ The company also says it works with Federal Prosecutors ‘to regulate the industry on the issue of illegal deforestation’ meatpacking companies and state agencies have been communicating to find ways to monitor indirect suppliers or those practicing ‘laundering’ but they have not yet found a definitive solution Agro SB said in a statement that ‘there is no irregularity in the trading/transfer of livestock from the Lagoa do Triunfo ranch’ since its ranches are divided into breeding The company said that it bought Lagoa do Triunfo in 2008 and that it ‘has never cut any vegetation in the property’ the embargoed area where the reporters found cattle grazing was fined 4.53 million reais by IBAMA for deforestation on November 10 The area was embargoed about 1 month later – when Agro SB had already purchased the ranch satellite monitoring by Global Forest Watch shows that it lost 796 hectares of native vegetation between 2009 and 2018 Agro SB did not respond to questions about the presence of cattle grazing in that location. The company also denies having used slave labour and claims it is unaware of the land grabbing investigation by Prosecutor’s Office. (Read the company’s full statement here in Portuguese) JBS is one of the companies accused by Swedish consultancy TRASE (Transparent Production Chains for Sustainable Economies) of being complicit in deforesting the Amazon The multinational company is the world’s largest producer of animal protein and it slaughters nearly 35,000 cattle per day in Brazil alone It is responsible for destroying between 28,000 and 32,000 hectares of forest per year to export meat according to data compiled by TRASE and provided exclusively to this report These figures do not include production meant for Brazil’s domestic market an area the size of Brasilia (580,000 hectares of forest) is deforested annually to be converted into pasture for livestock Besides having the largest number of cattle in Brazil – 18 animals per resident – São Félix do Xingu also has the third largest deforested area in the Amazon according to the National Institute of Space Research (INPE) São Félix do Xingu used to be a fishing village by the Xingu River The arrival of miners and loggers triggered the deforestation cycle later consolidated by livestock The number of animals in town grew exponentially They were 91 in 1977 and 217,000 twenty years later One of the main attractions in a cattle town is horse racing Ranchers are gathered at the Negão Horse Club on a Saturday afternoon in early June Some of them show off 100-real-bills for informal bets The official betting bank accumulated 200,000 reais on that day Arlindo Rosa and Francisco Torres are authorities there President and vice-president of the Rural Producers’ Association of São Félix do Xingu respectively they voice ranchers’ – and President Jair Bolsonaro’s – views against environmental controls They [Ibama’s inspectors] apply them without hesitating’ who has already been fined four times for deforestation The two association leaders estimate that 90% of properties in São Felix do Xingu include areas embargoed by IBAMA for deforestation Ranchers’ complain that even a small area embargoed in a huge farm prevents producers from selling to meatpacking companies ‘We are having a hard time selling our cattle because the companies won’t buy from embargoed areas’ While they estimate that a large part of producers in São Félix do Xingu cannot sell to meatpacking companies because of environmental problems they readily list the slaughterhouses that buy livestock from local ranches is the international market: ‘Lots of cattle leave this town in ships in the town with the largest number of cattle in Brazil the local popular saying seems to make sense: “Oxen don’t die of old age” Sua contribuição permite que a gente continue revelando o que muita gente faz de tudo para esconder Receba as investigações daagência de jornalismo daRepórter Brasil no seu e-mail. 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