JBS says new Greenpeace accusations are false and threatens legal action
07/06/2012
In a statement dated June 6, reported word for word across many media in Europe and North America, Greenpeace said its 2009 campaign was responsible for packer and tanning groups in Brazil agreeing to source no cattle or hides from illegally deforested areas and then singled out JBS for having “failed to fulfil any of its commitments”.
It said: “We have new evidence showing that it [JBS] is buying from farms that deforest illegally and occupy indigenous lands. We managed to trace the supply of beef linked to Amazon destruction to supermarkets and wholesalers in Europe and Brazil such as Tesco and Pão de Açúcar. We also found that Dutch and Belgian importers and wholesalers such as Makro, Sligro Food Group and Van Aerde were buying Brazilian beef from JBS.”
This is a familiar Greenpeace tactic, naming high-profile buyers to pressurise them into demanding change from their suppliers. In this instance, UK retail group Tesco said it would drop JBS as a supplier immediately. In previous campaigns, Greenpeace has also named users of leather from Brazilian tanneries to pressuries them to take similar action.
JBS has issued a strong statement in response, saying: “JBS denies these false accusations from Greenpeace and will now take suitable legal action. We were surprised by the statement Greenpeace has issued. The references to JBS in that statement are false, misleading and incorrect and are likely to lead people to draw an erroneous conclusion about what is happening. For this reason, JBS intends to take legal action against Greenpeace and will seek through all suitable legal means reparation for material damages and damages to JBS’s image that this incorrect information has caused.”
JBS said it was “horrified” by the way Greenpeace has acted and said it believed it had already shown its clients and society in general that it leads the way in sustainability among Brazilian packer and tanning groups. It employs directly more than 500 people in roles linked to sustainability and says it goes “way beyond our legal obligations in this area”.
Its investments in sustainability include programmes for sustainable cattle farming, satellite monitoring of rural properties in Amazon regions, “pioneering strategies” registered with the United Nations for generating carbon credits, projects for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, for reducing water consumption in its production units, for waste management, biofuel production and the use of renewable energy resources.
It went on to list the properties that Greenpeace has highlighted in its new statement and gave details of errors in the campaign group’s information. For example, it said that one farm, Fazenda Flor da Mata in Mato Grosso state, now features on an exclusion list run by IBAMA, Brazil’s environment ministry. However, JBS went on to say: “We last bought from this supplier on July 15, 2011, at which time this farm did not feature on IBAMA’s list. IBAMA decided to include the farm on the list on December 2, 2011, after our last purchase from it. After its inclusion on the IBAMA list, this farm was automatically excluded from the list of approved suppliers to our company.”
In another instance, it said Greenpeace’s accusation centring on the Fazenda Vento Sul facility, also in Mato Grosso, was false because the farm still does not feature on IBAMA’s list.
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