World's
biggest meat company linked to 'brutal massacre' in Amazon
Investigation
traces meat sold to JBS and rival Marfrig to farm owned by man implicated in
Mato Grosso killings
Dom
Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
3 Mar 2020
13.31 GMTLast modified on Tue 3 Mar 2020 14.28 GMT
Crosses
depicting people murdered for defending the forest stand on a large map of the
Amazon, during a protest against the illegal timber trade, in front of the
Brazilian National Congress building, in Brasilia, Brazil, 21 November 2017
A new
investigation has linked the world’s biggest meat company JBS, and its rival
Marfrig, to a farm whose owner is implicated in one of the most brutal
Amazonian massacres in recent memory.
The report
by Repórter Brasil comes as JBS faces growing pressure over transparency
failings in its Amazon cattle supply chain.
On 19 April
2017, nine men were brutally murdered in what became known as the “Colniza
massacre”. The men had been squatting on remote forest land in the state of
Mato Grosso when their bodies were found, according to court documents. Some
showed signs of torture; some had been stabbed, others shot.
According
to charges filed by state prosecutors in Mato Grosso, the massacre was carried
out by a gang known as “the hooded ones”. The aim, they said, was to terrify
locals, take over land they lived on and extract valuable natural resources.
The first reporter to reach the lawless, far-flung region only got there a week
later.
On 15 May
2017, prosecutors said they had charged Valdelir João de Souza, a farmer who
owned two timber companies on neighbouring land, and four others with homicide
and forming or being part of an illegal paramilitary group. Prosecutors said de
Souza had ordered the massacre, although he had not been present when it
occurred.
Since then
de Souza has been a fugitive. But in April 2018 two adjacent areas of land –
Três Lagoas and Piracama farms - in nearby Rondônia state were registered under
his name (one of the oddities of the Brazilian property system is that
landowners register their own land and boundaries). The two farms covered 1,052
hectares (2,599 acres) in an area set aside by the government for low-income
agricultural workers. Satellite images show extensive deforestation on the Três
Lagoas farm in 2015.
Government
sanitary records seen by Repórter Brasil show that on 9 May 2018 143 cattle
were sold by the Três Lagoas and Piracama farms to a farm owned by Maurício
Narde.
Minutes
later Narde’s farm sold 143 animals of the same sex and age – 80 female cattle
between 13– 24 months old and 63 female cattle over 36 months old – to a JBS
meatpacker.
In June
2017, according to court documents in a separate case, Narde worked at a
sawmill owned by de Souza in Machadinho d’Oeste in Rondônia state. He still
works at the same sawmill, although it has since changed its name and is no
longer controlled by de Souza. Reached by telephone by the Guardian, Narde
confirmed the transaction but did not explain why he had sold the cattle after
buying them minutes beforehand.
“We buy and
sell, just to keep things moving,” he said, before deciding not to answer any
more questions and concluding the interview.
The quick
sale of the cattle suggests what environmentalists call “cattle laundering” –
when cattle from a farm that has environmental issues sells cattle to a “clean”
farm. This gets around monitoring systems because meat companies including JBS
do not monitor these “indirect suppliers”.
“This series of coincidences suggests a common
practice, which is the triangulation of animals,” said Mauro Armelin, director
of Friends of the Earth Brazil. “It is a practice that could indicate cattle
laundering.”
On 25 June
2018, according to government sanitary records, Três Lagoas also sold 153 head
of cattle to the Morro Alto farm in Monte Negro, Rondônia, owned by José Carlos
de Albuquerque.
In the
following months de Albuquerque sold dozens of head of cattle to JBS and
Marfrig slaughterhouses.
De
Albuquerque told Réporter Brasil that the sale had never been completed – but
the report cited sanitary records showing the cattle had, in fact, entered the
Morro Alto farm. Contacted by the Guardian by phone and email, he declined to
answer questions.
The
Repórter Brasil investigation highlights the difficulties that Brazil’s big
meat companies have in monitoring their supply chains.
JBS and
other big companies such as Marfrig committed to not buying from farms involved
in illegal deforestation in two separate agreements signed with Greenpeace and
Brazilian prosecutors in 2009 and subsequent years. Under the Greenpeace deal,
the companies also promised to remove producers accused of land grabbing or
convicted in rural conflicts from their suppliers lists. The deal with federal
prosecutors similarly bans farms that have been convicted of involvement in
rural conflicts, or that are being investigated.
Greenpeace
quit their deal in 2017, after JBS was fined for buying cattle from farms in
illegally-deforested areas in the Amazon state of Pará. An audit by federal
prosecutors found that 19% of the cattle JBS purchased in the state in 2016 had
“evidence of irregularities”.
In the
years following the cattle agreement, JBS made enormous progress in improving
its monitoring of Amazon suppliers and the company defended its sustainability
in a statement.
“We monitor
over 280,000 square miles, an area larger than Germany, and assess more than
50,000 potential cattle-supplying farms every day, as well as conducting daily
checks of all purchases to ensure compliance with strict standards. To date we
have blocked more than 8,000 cattle-supplying farms due to noncompliance,” it
said.
But while
the company now has a complex system in place to monitor its direct suppliers,
it is still unable to monitor its indirect suppliers – those farmers who sell
to farms that then sell on to JBS.
De Souza’s
case has yet to be concluded. Ulisses Rabaneda, a lawyer representing de Souza,
told the Guardian that he had decided not to reply to questions from the media
at this stage in the court proceedings.
In an
interview with the Gazeta Digital in 2019, de Souza said he was innocent of all
charges, had never been involved in death squads, and remained a fugitive
because he was scared he would be murdered by the real killers if he handed
himself in.
“I never
went around armed, so why at my age of 41, with solid companies, a peaceful
life, no debts, without any problems, would I do something so barbaric?” de
Souza said in the interview. “I built everything with the honesty and effort of
my family. Why would I throw it all away?”
JBS told
Réporter Brasil that de Souza was not a supplier and that it does not “acquire
cattle from farms involved in deforestation of native forests, invasion of
indigenous reserves of conservation, rural violence, land conflicts, or that
used slave or child labour”.
“JBS
reiterates that any attempt to link the company to the person mentioned in the
report, who was never on its list of suppliers, is irresponsible,” the company
told the Guardian.
Marfrig
declined to comment on the investigation and sent the statement it had
previously sent to the Guardian in December in which the company recognised
that 53% of its Amazon cattle comes from indirect suppliers.
“Marfrig is
fully aware of the challenges related to the livestock production chain and
recognises its role as an important transformation agent to ensure production
vis-à-vis the conservation of Brazilian biomes, especially the Amazon,” the
company said.
It detailed
measures including a supplier monitoring platform and its Request for
Information (RFI) tool, in which suppliers voluntarily list the farms they may
have acquired animals from. The company says a third of the cattle it sources
in the Amazon come with an RFI, and it is now working to improve the process
with World Wildlife Fund.
In 2017, a
Greenpeace report published after the Colniza massacre said a company owned by
de Souza, called Madeireira Cedroarana, had accumulated around $150,000
(£116,000) in unpaid fines over a decade from Brazil’s environment agency,
Ibama.
Between
January 2016 and October 2017 the company exported thousands of cubic metres of
timber to the US and Europe. In 2018 it changed its name to Colmar Madeiras; it
continues at the same address, but de Souza is no longer its controlling
partner. In the interview with Gazeta Digital, he said his company had
challenged fines it had received.
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