JBS, Marfrig, Frigol - Among Biggest Beef Producers On Earth - Buying Slave/Deforestation Beef
Brazilian meatpacking giants JBS, Marfrig and Frigol bought cattle from ranches associated with illegal practices, including deforestation and slave labor, an investigation by Repórter Brasil has found. The ranches in question are located in Brazil’s Pará state, the epicenter of the ongoing fires ravaging the Amazon, providing further evidence of the link between deforestation for cattle pasture and burning.
In February, Marfrig, the world’s second-biggest beef producer, received cattle at its slaughterhouse in Tucumã, Pará, from the ranch of Adriano José de Mattos, Repórter Brasil discovered from control documents. Frigol, another major player in the industry, also purchased cattle from Mattos between March and July this year.
But in January this year, 26 days before Marfrig’s purchase, inspectors from IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental agency, found cattle from Mattos’s ranch grazing in a 106-hectare (262-acre) illegally deforested area inside the Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area (EPA). The site had already been embargoed three years earlier for illegal deforestation. According to the inspectors, Mattos’s Limeira Ranch, located 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) away, served as the operational base for encroaching into the area.
Marfrig told Repórter Brasil that information about the charges and embargoes against Mattos had not yet been made publicly available at the time of its purchase. “We depend on information from IBAMA’s website. This should happen in real time,” said Paulo Pianez, the company’s sustainability director. Marfrig says it is committed to zero deforestation in the Amazon, to monitoring all suppliers via satellite, and to not purchasing cattle from areas embargoed for environmental crimes (see Marfrig’s full statement).
EDIT
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/worlds-biggest-meatpackers-buying-cattle-from-deforesters-in-amazon/