"Why meatpacker JBS’s IPO matters for the planet", 04 August 2025

...After multiple failed attempts – and pushback by environmental and human rights groups, including Global Witness – JBS has succeeded in being publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), in what is being referred to as its US “Initial Public Offering” or “IPO”...

JBS has been one of the slowest companies to end sourcing from ranches tied to Amazon deforestation.

A 2020 Global Witness investigation into JBS’ supply chain in Pará state found that, over the course of three years, JBS was supplied by more than 300 ranches linked to over 15,000 ha of deforestation in total.

In a follow up investigation, we found that JBS continued to purchase from 144 of these same ranches and failed to monitor an additional 470 ranches in its supply chain linked to over 40,000 ha of deforestation...

Our latest investigation exposed JBS’s ties to jaguar habitat destruction, with one supplier to the company clearing over 1,200 hectares of protected land in Brazil in the past decade...

JBS has been tied to multiple human rights violations, including purchasing from suppliers that have illegally invaded Indigenous lands, land grabbing from conservation areas, and labour abuses...

Last year, an analysis by the Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCCA) in Brazil found nearly 8,000 head of cattle produced by these invading ranchers entered JBS’s supply chain. Previously, another investigation found that JBS purchased cattle from a rancher in Pará who was accused of land grabbing and murder...

We’ve repeatedly shown how financial heavyweights like BlackRock, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs have bankrolled the meatpacker’s destructive operations.

Our investigation found that between 2018 to 2023, Barclays was the top creditor to JBS, earning over $1.7 billion from financing the company’s global operations. The responses of Barclays and the JBS’s other creditors to our investigation are set out in our full report...

Only Aviva told us publicly they would exclude JBS from further active investment moving forward. Robeco told us that it uses its shareholding to push for positive change, though it is unclear what results this approach has yielded...

What’s worse, the company now appears to be publicly abandoning sustainability claims. In early 2025, the company’s global chief sustainability officer Jason Weller said that the company’s net-zero by 2040 target was merely an "aspiration", admitting "it was never a promise that JBS was going to make this happen"...