Cattle graze at a ranch in the Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve, Brazil, October 2019. JOAO LAET / THE GUARDIAN
JBS, Marfrig and Minerva: these names mean nothing to the French consumer. Still, the three Brazilian multinationals produce around 70% of the country’s beef exports. In 2022 alone, JBS claims to have slaughtered an average of 75,000 cattle per day for customers in more than 190 countries. This beef is by far the main cause of deforestation in the Amazon. The subject had become one of journalist Dom Phillips’ hobbies. The Guardian correspondent, who had made Brazil his adopted country since 2007, had devoted his last articles to the meat industry before he was assassinated, coinciding with indigenous peoples expert Bruno Pereira, June 5, 2022.
While JBS has pledged to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, Dom Phillips, in his most recent article for the UK daily in March 2021, recalled that a large part of that goal could be achieved if “JBS scales back the deforestation it carries out suppliers in the Amazon”. The consortium of journalists put together by Forbidden Stories to carry on the reporter’s work reveals that the three multinationals he was investigating still risk sourcing from farms responsible for deforestation to meet demand from China but also from Europe.
JBS, Marfrig and Minerva have a duty to ensure their direct suppliers are not involved in illegal logging. Yet to hide the true origins of their cattle, some breeders are moving their animals from a “dirty” farm, which comes with forest destruction, to a “clean” farm — with no logging — before the slaughterhouse. In 2020, Dom Phillips for the Guardian, in collaboration with Repórter Brasil and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, brought to light a concrete example of this “money laundering” practice, exposing the complicity between multinational JBS and a grower sanctioning illegal logging became.
“The Project Bruno and Dom” published in three parts
On June 5, 2022, reporter Dom Phillips and indigenous peoples expert Bruno Pereira were killed in the Javari Valley in the heart of the Amazon in Brazil. The Forbidden Stories consortium, which follows the work of murdered or threatened journalists, and sixteen media outlets from ten countries have joined forces to continue their investigation. After a year of research, they publish “The Bruno and Dom Project” in three parts, bringing to light the networks of illegal fishing that threaten resources and indigenous people, the continuous exports of meat due to deforestation and its sale , in social networks about protected Amazon territory.
Bad practices that endure
The investigation, coordinated by Forbidden Stories in collaboration with the newspapers that published this earlier story, as well as Dutch daily NRC and German investigative agency Paper Trail Media, shows that the breeder involved in the investigation of Dom Phillips is not wrong practices but found a new customer to sell their meat: Marfrig.
From one multinational to another, meat from deforested areas can be sold to Brazilian or foreign consumers. The country’s slaughterhouses export around 20% of their meat. About 1% of all Brazilian production ends up in the European Union and the United Kingdom, a proportion that may seem small, but is equivalent to around 100,000 tons per year.
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