NGO points out deforestation with evidence of connection with JBS – 04/24/2023 – Environment

The largest food company in the world, JBS maintained a relationship with illegal deforestation through part of its cattle suppliers from 2019 to 2022. Sheet had access to a compilation of 68 cases of deforestation on farms with indications of direct, indirect or potential links with JBS, in the Amazon and in the cerrado, during the period.

The company claims that 69% of these episodes were identified by its monitoring policies, and suppliers were blocked. JBS denies that the remaining 31% are suppliers.

Gathered by the NGOs Mighty Earth and AidEnvironment, the cases total 125.4 thousand hectares of deforested areas — of which 73.7 thousand hectares are protected areas, such as legal reserves and APPs (permanent preservation areas).

As a starting point for identifying cases of deforestation, the study uses the Deter system, from Inpe (National Institute for Space Research), which provides daily deforestation alerts.

“Alerts are confirmed by high-resolution satellite images from the [sistema] Planet”, says Joana Faggin, senior researcher at AidEnvironment, an NGO focused on research on agriculture, with offices in the Netherlands, Indonesia and Uganda.

Confirmation that the deforestation took place in protected areas is then done by crossing the data with the CARs (rural environmental records) of the properties, which inform which area of ​​the property is destined for protection.

The connection of the property with the purchase of cattle by JBS is done by the researchers through the GTAs, the animal transit guides, which inform the farms of origin and destination of the cattle.

Of the 68 farms with deforestation verified by the NGO, 21 are direct suppliers of cattle to JBS. This conclusion is possible because the GTAs show a direct relationship: the cattle leave the farm where there was deforestation and go directly to a JBS slaughterhouse.

Another 43 cases of deforestation took place on farms of indirect suppliers, that is, on properties that supplied cattle to a second farm, which, in turn, sold to JBS.

“In these cases, there is a GTA linking this property to another farm, linked by another GTA to JBS. Here we check the date, for example: in May, the cattle moved from the first to the second farm, which after May sold to the fridge”, explains Faggin.

“However, we did not calculate the age of the cattle, or how long it stayed on the second farm, which would allow us to establish a higher connection, equivalent to that of a direct supplier”, he points out.

There is also a third level of connection, the potential, which corresponds to 4 of the 68 cases. For them, there is not enough data to certify the supply, but there are indications, as in the case of the slaughterhouse being the main exporter of meat in a municipality with deforestation.

“The slaughterhouse should be aware of this deforestation. It is a warning. Already in the medium and high connections [que comprovam fornecimento direto ou indireto]the slaughterhouse needs to check that supplier”, distinguishes Faggin.

Mighty Earth, a US-based NGO dedicated to campaigns on industry-linked deforestation, asked JBS to verify each of the 68 cases, sent to the company’s sustainability board on Dec. 5. The report had access to the exchange of emails.

On January 7, the sustainability board at JBS responded that the cases could not be verified because they were based on alerts from the Deter system, not from Prodes —both belonging to Inpe.

“Inpe advises against its use because it is an early warning system, without the necessary granularity and precision”, says the email.

A SheetInpe states that Deter “has always proved to be reliable and accurate, reaching more than 90% in the index of correctness of its detections”.

In a note signed by technicians Cláudio Almeida and Luis Maurano, responsible for the Monitoring Program for the Amazon and Other Biomes, the agency clarifies that Prodes was chosen as the basis for the certification of production chains in environmental compliance policies, as in the Terms of Adjustment of Conduct (TACs) of Meat, “since this is official data from the State and is updated annually”.

“The non-use of Deter data is based on these characteristics, and not on the fact that Deter is less accurate”, completes Inpe. “The occurrence of a Deter polygon on a property, even if it does not generate immediate blocking by a favoring party, should at least serve as an alert for the buyer of products from that property.”

The latest result of the TAC audit signed by JBS with the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) in Pará shows, based on the monitoring of the Prodes system, evidence of irregularities in 44% of the cattle acquired by the company in that state between July 2019 and June 2019. 2020.

A SheetJBS once again defended the use of the Prodes system to verify deforestation and stated that the NGO survey “requests old information” based on a “flawed methodology” that “disrespects the protocol of the Federal Public Ministry”.

“In 69% of them [os casos apontados no levantamento]the company’s monitoring had already identified that some of its socio-environmental criteria had not been respected and, following the Monitoring Protocol of the Federal Public Ministry and the Company’s Responsible Purchasing Policy, JBS had blocked the supplier”, he says. “The another 31% are not in the company’s supplier base.”

The company’s press office refused to identify the cases and did not explain whether indirect suppliers or former suppliers could be included in the 31% that are not included in the base.

“JBS has maintained a geospatial system for more than ten years that monitors its direct suppliers on a daily basis and has already blocked 15,000 of them for disrespecting the socio-environmental criteria of the company and the sector”, says the company.

On Thursday (20), the NGO Mighty Earth sent JBS shareholders and executives a complaint about the 68 cases. The entity asks that shareholders take the issue to the Board of Directors of JBS, which meets in a general meeting this Monday (24).

For João Gonçalves, director of Mighty Earth in Brazil, “in terms of transparency, JBS leaves much to be desired, choosing carefully what it will disclose”.

The challenge of monitoring indirect meat suppliers is common to the entire livestock sector, as cattle can be transported to different farms until slaughter. JBS has a voluntary goal of tracking indirect suppliers by 2025, eliminating links with farms that have illegal deforestation. However, direct supply control still suffers from flaws.

In November, the company admitted having purchased 8,785 illegal cattle supplied directly to the slaughterhouse by the country’s largest deforester, according to a report by Repórter Brasil.

“JBS does not prove that it controls the suppliers”, says the Radar Verde coordinator, Alexandre Mansur. The initiative evaluated, in the last year, the control and transparency over the meat chain based on data provided by companies on their policies to combat deforestation.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}