Ranchers herd cattle on a farm in Xinguara, Para state, Brazil, in October 2021. Photo: Jonne Roriz / Bloomberg via Getty Images

JBS, the world’s largest meat company, will fail to meet its flagship commitment to eliminate both legal and illegal deforestation in its vast Amazon rainforest supply chain by the end of this year, according to beef producers.  

Working with the Guardian and Reporter Brasil, Unearthed interviewed more than 35 ranchers and cattle industry representatives over three field trips to the Amazon. Ranchers told us they believe the company’s ambitious environmental pledge is impossible to achieve. Many described a system riddled with corruption where cattle from illegally deforested land are routinely laundered through ‘clean’ farms – sometimes even with JBS’s knowledge, they said.

JBS supplies companies including McDonald’s, Tesco and Walmart, has annual revenues of $73bn and is currently preparing to list shares on the New York Stock Exchange. The company, which started as a Brazilian butcher’s shop, has operations spanning the globe and the capacity to slaughter 76,000 cattle, 14 million chickens and 142,000 hogs each day. 

But the company has long been implicated in the deforestation of the Amazon, where a vast and dispersed network of cattle farms supply it with beef.

After sustained pressure, in 2021 JBS vowed it would stop buying cattle raised on illegally deforested land in the Amazon by the end of 2025 as part of its Net Zero pledge. The following year at the COP27 UN climate talks, JBS extended its deforestation pledge to include cattle raised on any land cleared after 2008, whether the deforestation was legal or not – a move that, if followed through on, would be likely to rule out huge swathes of its current Amazon supply chain.

JBS’s global chief sustainability officer, Jason Weller, repeated the pledge to eliminate both legal and illegal deforestation, in 2023 in testimony to a US Senate finance committee hearing on JBS’s role in Amazon deforestation. 

Now our on-the-ground reporting across the Amazon’s two key cattle-producing states suggests that extricating itself from links to deforestation in the world’s biggest rainforest is proving harder than JBS appears willing to admit.

Ranchers described a system dominated by JBS, and plagued with loopholes. Most said a traceable, fully deforestation-free supply chain by the end of 2025 was wholly unrealistic, especially while maintaining JBS’s production levels. 

The year isn’t over yet, but there should have been clearer signs of progress
Paulo Barreto, Imazon

Sectoral leaders warned that a genuine attempt to reach the target this year could trigger a collapse of the small-scale farmers that comprise most of the industry.

A JBS spokesperson said: “JBS respectfully contests these conclusions. Drawing ‘inferences’ and conclusions from a limited sample of 30 farmers while disregarding that JBS has over 40,000 registered suppliers is entirely irresponsible.”

The company did not respond to questions on whether it was on course to meet its end-of-year target, but a spokesperson said: “The company is dedicated to eliminating illegal deforestation across its cattle supply chain in all Brazilian biomes where it operates.”

“JBS’s evolution has been slow, which is not compatible with the size of the company,” said Ricardo Negrini, a federal prosecutor in Brazil’s Pará state who monitors the meatpackers’ progress on deforestation goals. “JBS should have the best systems, the best controls, the best practices. But it doesn’t.”

“They certainly have the will to do it, just as we have the will to do it,” said Andre*, director of a rural union in Pará state. 

In Pará, a key cattle-producing state, JBS is supporting a government programme to individually track all cattle that transit through the state from birth with eartags, also by the end of the year.

Andre added that refusing to buy any cattle not tracked from birth by January 2026 could leave JBS without sufficient supply. 

“They say this is going to be implemented. I’d say straight away: that’s impossible.”

A JBS spokesperson said: “From JBS’s point of view, a definitive solution to ensure the integrity of the cattle market will only come with a mandatory national identification system.” JBS and its partners have donated three million tags to Pará’s ear-tagging programme, he said.

“The year isn’t over yet, but there should have been clearer signs of progress,” said Paulo Barreto, a senior researcher at Imazon, a non-profit that tracks deforestation in the Amazon.  

‘A land without men for men without land’

Brazil’s military dictatorship offered incentives to those who settled in the Amazon in the 1970s. With disregard for the region’s Indigenous people, it characterised the Amazon as “land without men for men without land”. Ranchers from the crowded agricultural southern states moved in, and decades of relentless deforestation for cattle ranching followed. 

Today, the state of Pará alone has 26 million head of cattle and its pasture areas have grown 150% in 20 years. Meanwhile, the Amazon has lost over a sixth (17%) of its cover, and is edging closer to an ecological tipping point from which it may never recover. 

Over the same period, JBS has transformed from a rural Brazilian butcher into a global beef behemoth, dominating Amazon cattle-buying through aggressive expansion and acquisitions while also building huge operations in the US, Australia and elsewhere. Loans from Brazil’s development bank and global banks like Barclays fuelled its growth. 

In 2017 JBS was hit by corruption investigations. Its chair Joesley Batista and his brother Wesley Batista, the CEO, left their roles after entering into a plea deal in which they acknowledged bribing hundreds of politicians. But JBS’s meteoric rise continued, buoyed by surging global demand for beef – it is now Brazil’s biggest employer. In 2024, the Batista brothers reclaimed their seats on the company’s board of directors. 

But international concern over the company’s role in Amazon destruction has become a public-relations headache as JBS prepares to list shares on the New York Stock Exchange. 

Promises, promises

JBS has made – and broken – zero-deforestation pledges before. In 2009, following a Greenpeace International investigation exposing the scale of beef-related deforestation in the Amazon, the country’s four largest meat processors, including JBS, signed the G4 Agreement, pledging to stop directly sourcing cattle from deforested land immediately and to ensure no indirect suppliers were deforesting either by 2011. Companies signed similar, legally binding agreements covering key states. 

These agreements reduced deforestation among direct suppliers, studies suggest, but oversight of the sprawling web of farms who sell cattle to these direct suppliers remains weak. 

JBS never implemented its 2011 target to eliminate deforestation among these indirect suppliers but in 2020, the company again vowed to track its indirect suppliers, introducing an app using blockchain technology to log cattle transport documents. 

The move was received warmly by some investors. “When they elect something as a top priority, they deliver,” Pedro Leduc, then-head of research at BLP Asset, said at the time. In 2022, JBS won “Best ESG Program” in Institutional Investor magazine’s awards for Latin America’s Food and Beverage sector. 

When JBS made its first deforestation pledge, it had 14 slaughterhouses in the Amazon. Today, it has 22 in operation, with the capacity to slaughter more than 19,000 cattle daily. 

“JBS could have stopped buying from regions with a high risk of deforestation, closing some of the plants operating in these regions… I’ve heard that there was pressure from investors to do so,” said Barreto.

Satellite experts AidEnvironment identified at least 324,000 ha (3,240 sq km) of deforestation – an area twice the size of Greater London – linked to just 17 of the active Amazon abattoirs in JBS’s supply chain since it first pledged to tackle deforestation in 2009.  

Even after JBS’s 2022 commitment, violations persist. Mighty Earth and AidEnvironment’s Soy & Cattle Deforestation Tracker found JBS linked to almost 900 sq km of deforestation in the Amazon between February 2022 and July 2024 alone. A 2025 study by Imazon concluded that JBS still posed the greatest risk to the forest because of the sheer scale of its operations in the region. 

Every direct supplier to a JBS abattoir must provide details of their farm, so that JBS can use satellites to detect any deforestation on the property and cross-check the farm against regulatory records of fines and sanctions for deforestation and other infractions. 

JBS claims it has fully eliminated illegal deforestation among these direct suppliers – but the system sometimes fails. In the past six months alone, investigations by both Reporter Brasil and Unearthed have identified separate incidents in which JBS bought directly from farms penalised for illegal deforestation.

Indirect suppliers remain a blind spot. In the Amazon, cattle typically pass through multiple ranches from birth to slaughter, making them hard to trace. The breeding and rearing farms at the very start of the chain are often smaller, newer operations that are more likely to be engaged in deforestation – particularly illegal clearing.

“The challenge of tracking indirect farms – where the cattle spend most of their lives – remains. No company has proven complete traceability on these properties,” concluded Imazon’s latest study into cattle and deforestation risk. 

Monitoring the indirect suppliers is “challenging,” but feasible, particularly “given how long it’s been since the first promises were made,” said Imazon’s Barreto. 

Some farmers said that JBS is stricter than others. “I can’t buy cattle from a dirty area today to send to [JBS], even if it goes through my company,” said Bruno*, who owns a farm in Anapu, Pará, explaining that JBS is more likely than its rivals to ask for documents.

But other suppliers told us there are plenty of ways to bypass these controls.

‘Humanly impossible’ rules

JBS requires its direct suppliers to log details of their own suppliers on its tracking system by the end of the year. However, Andre called this “humanly impossible” to enforce. 

“It won’t work,” he said, explaining how buyers could circumvent it. “I buy from 20, 30 [different] suppliers. I’ll choose two or three and say that I only buy from them. When JBS goes to look, it will see that these ones are fine.” 

When buying cattle, Andre said he does not consider deforestation. “I like the cattle, the price is good, I buy his cattle and we go home.”

Cesar*, who produces 6,000 head of cattle per year in Rondônia, said ensuring compliance among indirect suppliers is unrealistic. “I think 60%, 70% of farmers will have an infraction here,” he said. 

“You buy from 15, 20 different producers a month. So one of those is going to have a problem,” he said, adding that checking all suppliers was impossible.  

Andre would not know how to verify that the cattle he buys came from clean farms, he said.

There’s a lack of support, a lack of educating, lecturing, encouraging
Daniel, farmer in Tucumã

“How am I going to do this investigation to find out if the guy has Prodes?” he asked, referring to an area of clearing identified by government satellite data. “If I ask [the supplier], he’ll say of course not.”

“The vast majority” of farmers in the region would struggle to meet JBS’s requirements to register suppliers on the company’s blockchain platform, said Jimmy Simpson, director of the Marabá rural union in Pará. “They won’t have the time, they don’t have the documents, they don’t have the capacity yet, right?”

Gesturing at his phone, he added: “We have a lot of producers in Pará who don’t know how to use this stuff.”

The company said: “JBS has already enrolled over the equivalent of over 80% of its annual cattle purchases onto a blockchain-enabled, web-based Transparent Farming Livestock Platform that provides JBS and its cattle suppliers greater insights into indirect cattle suppliers.” 

Larger farmers described feeling disempowered. “JBS, all the companies, the government, they keep planning how they’re going to solve their problem behind our backs,” said Cesar. 

Daniel*, also from Tucumã, said that though JBS has held some meetings on individual cattle traceability, “I was left wanting information.” 

He added: “There’s a lack of support, a lack of educating, lecturing, encouraging.”

As part of its efforts to clean up its supply chain, JBS has set up a network of ‘green offices’. These are specialists, usually based in slaughterhouses, who advise farmers on how to achieve compliance with environmental rules. But even some of those in JBS green offices appear unfamiliar with the details of the pledge.

Brazil’s forest code allows Amazon farmers to clear 20% of their land with a permit – but JBS’s deforestation pledge goes further, blocking cattle raised from farms that deforested any land after July 2008, with or without authorisation.

Environmental engineer Ada*, who works with JBS green offices in Pará, said her team adhered to the forest code. “JBS only works on what’s in the legislation, it’s not [asking for] more than that,” she said. In Pará, she added, “hardly any area hasn’t been opened up since 2008.”

A JBS spokesperson said: “To help producers regularise their farms and achieve compliance with the Brazil Forest Code, JBS operates a network of 20 Green Offices in the Amazon and Cerrado regions to provide free technical assistance. JBS on its own has helped more than 15,000 rural properties receive consultancy and technical support, and more than 6,000 hectares were allocated for forest recovery since 2021.”

Window dressing

Many ranchers predicted that JBS would charge premium prices for “deforestation-free” beef, but that this would fail to benefit producers.

“The industry will receive a tracked product, which will have enormous importance in commercial terms in the international market, but we, rural producers, will not receive a single [additional] cent,” said Cristina Malcher, president of the Women in Agriculture Commission at the CNA, a farmers’ trade group.

We can give you a certified product… but we’re not being valued. We’re strangled and sucked dry.
– Cesar, farmer in Rondônia

She added: “JBS only works in its [own] favour. It wants the market abroad, so it comes here and sets a bunch of rules for us to follow, to be able to produce the product it wants to serve, but it doesn’t pay us… JBS is a cancer of Brazilian rural production.”

“We can give you a certified product… but we’re not being valued,” said Cesar. “We’re strangled and sucked dry.”

Some producers view JBS’s sustainability pledges as window dressing. “It’s like a shopping mall, right?” saidAdélio Barofaldi, one of Rondônia’s largest ranchers and chairman of the board of the Pan-Amazon Association. “You don’t see any garbage, you don’t see any storage… it’s creating a beautiful showcase, but behind the showcase there’s a lot that needs to be adjusted.”

Farmers feel that they are being unfairly forced to bear the brunt of these adjustments. “They want to put all the responsibility on the producer, but that’s not true. If we’d had a correct environmental system from the start, the situation would have been different,” said José de Carvalho Sobrinho, president of Pimenta Bueno’s rural producers’ union, in Rondônia.

Dirty laundering, open air

In southern Pará’s ranching heartland, little forest remains; cattle pastures stretch to the horizon, interrupted only by the occasional Ipê tree – a once-abundant hardwood with bright yellow or purple blooms where cattle find shade. The mostly paved roads accommodate a constant flow of cattle trucks moving from farm to slaughterhouse. 

Ranchers in the state, home to Brazil’s second-largest cattle herd and the highest overall deforestation rate, and in Rondônia, a newer deforestation frontier, described widespread cattle laundering to circumvent JBS’s monitoring systems.

Barofaldi described how farmers use “jeitinhos” – Brazilian slang for rule-bending – to bypass environmental restrictions. A common practice involves farmers with embargoed land renting a “clean” farm nearby in order to provide legitimate documentation for cattle sales. “It’s like that all over Brazil.”

Often, he said, JBS slaughterhouses knew, but turned a blind eye. “[JBS] ends up having to connive,” Barofaldi said. “It’s the rule of the game.”

“Everyone does this,” said Sobrinho. “People pass their cattle from one [farm] to another, and when they get to the meat-packing plant, everything is ‘legalised’.”

Haroldo*, who keeps 3,000 cows across two farms in Pará, even claims JBS is aware of his cattle laundering. His property is embargoed – due to his stepson cutting down forest illegally, he said. He continues to supply JBS by using a cattle transit document (GTA), in his own name, with the land registry (CAR) number of a “clean” property belonging to another farmer.

“The cattle are leaving the other [farm’s] land, but only in quote marks, you know?” he explained.

The JBS slaughterhouse was aware, Haroldo said: “They know. Everything is agreed with them too.”

Ismar*, from Redenção, told a similar story. His property was embargoed by Ibama, the environmental regulator, for destroying more than 2,000 hectares of forest, so he sought help from a JBS Green Office.

JBS helped Ismar file paperwork to prove he was recovering his damaged land, he said. But he did not wait for official permits to resume selling to JBS – he simply laundered the cattle through other, “clean” properties.

“Whether the [slaughterhouse] unit manager likes it or not, he knows [that we were bringing cattle that were from the embargoed property],” he said.

Ada, who works with JBS Green Offices in Pará, noted a persistent challenge: “The biggest problem is in the cattle rancher’s head… It is hard to talk about the fact that today you can’t deforest any more.”

“Without radical transparency in its supply chains, the extent of JBS’s catastrophic climate emissions remains shrouded in mystery. JBS’s expansion plans will wreak further havoc on climate and nature,” argues Alex Wijeratna, senior director at environmental organisation Mighty Earth.

Industry collapse

When our reporting team visited Rondônia in October, the skies were heavy with drifting smoke. Extreme drought and wildfires sent air pollution in Porto Velho, the state capital, to dangerous levels and forced the state government to declare a state of emergency.

Much of this part of the state has been cleared of its humid jungle: it has lost a quarter of its forest since 2002. Ranches here tend to be modest; Rondônia’s cattle industry is dominated by smaller producers owning a few hundred animals.

As things stand, ranchers said, it would be unfeasible for JBS to maintain the scale of its operations while fulfilling its promise to exclude farms that have deforested land after 2008.

Without major structural changes, the system will continue to function as it does today: each link in the production chain finding ways around obstacles, said Barofaldi. Appearing to meet the target next year would require “a lot of jeitinhos.”

Cesar said: “Are [JBS] going to have enough animals to keep the slaughterhouse afloat?” he said. “Most of the cattle that arrive [at the JBS São Miguel slaughterhouse] have, at some point, passed through a farm that has an environmental limitation or problem at some point in their lives.”

Some ranchers expressed concern at what may happen if JBS, unable to source enough deforestation-free cattle, simply shutters its Amazon plants. 

Mauro Lúcio Costa, who runs a “finishing farm” in Tailândia, Pará, is well-known in his industry as an advocate for sustainable cattle farming in the Amazon. Costa had no doubt JBS were sincere in their efforts.

“If JBS can’t do it, what will it do? It will close its [operations] here, there is no problem at all [for JBS], it has industries all over the world,” he said. “But for us producers from Pará, it’s a huge loss if we… lose JBS here.”

He added: “Traceability is good for the producer. So that’s my job, without causing anger, without causing resentment, without causing hatred, but to show people how good this is, how much it improves the producer’s business.”

Alex Guaitolini, vice-president of the Rondônia state agriculture federation, feared the impacts of JBS quitting the region would reverberate throughout the local and state economy. 

“It will affect not only the countryside, but all the towns in the region that depend on this production. And even those who don’t depend directly will also be affected, because everything is interconnected,” said Guaitolini.

One major challenge cited by many ranchers is a paucity of land documentation in the Amazon. Some Amazon properties were created through settlement programmes where Brazilian bureaucracy has lagged in issuing titles. Many others are public lands that have been occupied illegally, deforested, then sold to ranchers banking on being able to retroactively claim land deeds. Sobrinho, of the Pimenta Bueno union, estimated around 40% of Rondônia’s farms are undocumented land possessions.  

“Nobody, or almost nobody, has a land document,” said Jimmy Simpson, director of the Marabá rural union.

But according to JBS’s monitoring protocols, suppliers do not need a land title to register and supply legally – only the CAR, an environmental certificate for the property. Barreto said that arguing that they cannot achieve traceability until Brazil has addressed land reform was an excuse on the part of the farmers. 

“It makes sense to want land regularity first, but that doesn’t guarantee that they will seek environmental regularity later,” he said.  

Barreto compared this to someone stealing a car, crashing into public property, and being told by authorities to fix it. But instead of doing so, they continue driving illegally and complain about being held accountable for the damage.

Arguing their sector would collapse was “terrorism,” said Negrini, the federal prosecutor. He argues that JBS has both the technological capacity and market influence to enforce these requirements, and that it is a lack of will and investment that has delayed significant gains. 

“JBS’s progress has been slow,” he said, adding that JBS has ample resources to invest in environmental monitoring and enough power to demand suppliers comply, so it should have made more progress by now.

“It really leaves a lot to be desired in this area.” 

A spokesperson for JBS said: “JBS takes seriously its responsibilities to address deforestation risks in its cattle supply chain. While the sector-wide challenges are significant and larger than any one company can solve on its own, we believe JBS has an in-depth and robust series of integrated policies, systems, and investments that are making a material and positive impact on reducing deforestation risks.”

* Some names have been changed