JBS is Brazil’s largest cattle company, and its activities have been tied to deforestation, habitat destruction and climate change. In spite of this, last year the meat giant JBS issued a billion-dollar Sustainability-Linked bond. Though there does not seem to be any commitment that the financing will be used for sustainability activities.
Mighty Earth released its newest analysis of deforestation data, which found that JBS was the worst-scoring meat packer and company overall. It has been linked to 100,000 hectares of clearance in the past two years – an area larger than all of Berlin. 75% of this clearance occurred in protected areas, making it potentially illegal under Brazilian law.
“Any investor that buys JBS’s sustainable bond will be complicit in the forest destruction and displacement of Indigenous communities they drive. This bond is probably the greatest bastardization of the term ‘sustainability’ in financial history, and that’s saying something. JBS remains a company that continues to sell meat linked to deforestation, even though there are more than a billion acres of land where deforestation-free agricultural production is possible. They could choose to be a leader in the global transition to a deforestation-free future, but instead they’ve chosen to conduct sustainability by press release.”
– Glenn Hurowitz, Mighty Earth CEO and Founder