We are taking on JBS over animal cruelty through our country offices around the world
News
Behind every JBS product is a hidden cost. Billions of animals kept in agonising conditions, environmental damage on a huge scale, and repeated claims that don’t match reality. Here’s what you need to know and what we’re doing about it.
JBS S.A. is the largest meat processing company in the world. It began in Brazil and now operates in 20 countries. Its products are sold in more than 100 countries.
The company earns around £57 billion each year. More than half of that comes from the United States.
Its brands include Pilgrim’s Pride, Swift, Moy Park and Seara. These are found in supermarkets around the world, including the UK.
The scale of its operations is vast. Every day, JBS can slaughter more than 13 million chickens, 128,000 pigs and 77,000 cows. JBS has recently secured a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. This comes as our research shows it may have avoided between $221 million USD (nearly £164 million) and $442 million USD (over £327 million) in taxes across the US, UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia and Mexico.
Why we are targeting JBS
We have made JBS a focus of our global factory farming campaign for a reason. No other company is linked to animal suffering on this scale.
JBS is not just part of the system, it helps drive it. We are part of the Drop JBS Coalition. Together with our partners, we have worked for years to challenge the company’s access to US investment markets. We are working to stop investor money being used to expand factory farming.
In 2024, we supported 20 civil society organisations in Nigeria. They opposed a government agreement with JBS that would expand industrial farming into a new region.
JBS has made public promises on animal protection, climate and deforestation but investigations tell a different story. Its supply chains have been linked to illegal deforestation in the Amazon, even after these promises were made.
The company has also been fined for child labour violations in the US. It has settled major legal cases and faced ongoing concerns about workers’ rights.
Holding JBS to account means challenging the wider system behind it.
The cost to animals and the planet
The harm caused by JBS comes from a system that treats animals as products and nature as something to use up. The meat giant kills more animals than any company in history and the scale of suffering is hard to imagine.
On farms linked to JBS, piglets have their tails cut and teeth ground down without pain relief while chickens are kept in spaces smaller than an A4 sheet of paper. They are bred to grow so fast their bodies cannot cope and many collapse before they reach slaughter.
Mother pigs spend most of their lives in gestation crates that are so small they cannot turn around or behave naturally. Many show signs of severe mental distress.
Animals who survive to slaughter often arrive injured, underfed and afraid, many are not properly stunned.
This is not a few isolated cases. This is how the system works.
At Pilgrim’s Pride facilities, investigators saw workers throwing and kicking live birds. In 2018, footage from a Kentucky supplier, in the US, showed pigs being kicked and punched. Mother pigs were still kept in crates the company had promised to phase out by 2016.
In both cases, JBS expressed concern and suspended the supplier, but it did not change the system. The cruelty is built into the business model.
Environmental damage and climate impact
JBS’s pig and chicken production alone creates emissions equal to 14 million cars each year, which is more than double the next biggest factory farming emitter.
The company has been fined for sourcing cattle from illegally deforested land in the Amazon. and investigations in 2024 suggest this is still happening. Brazil’s environmental agency, Ibama, found two JBS plants in Pará bought 59,000 cattle from ranches on embargoed forest land.
The impact is real. Brazil has seen severe flooding, linked in part to deforestation driven by supply chains like these.
Half of the world’s habitable land is already used for agriculture. Seventy-seven per cent of that is used for animals. JBS is driving this expansion.
Despite this, the company presents itself as a climate leader. It has promoted a “Net Zero by 2040” pledge, claiming that “bacon, chicken wings, and steak with net zero emissions. It’s possible.” It wasn’t and it isn’t.
There is no credible way to deliver this. In 2024, the New York Attorney General took action over misleading claims linked to this pledge. The case ended in a $1.1 million settlement.
What we are doing to stop JBS
The Annual General Meeting (AGM) is when JBS sets its direction and celebrates profits, but it also offers a chance to expose the true cost behind those profits.
Around the world, World Animal Protection has been holding JBS accountable for the severe suffering it causes. In Brazil, where JBS is based, we made our message impossible to ignore by projecting it across São Paulo to highlight concerns about corruption at its source.
In the UK, we took the campaign directly to one of JBS’s major financial backers by visiting Barclays’ offices in Canary Wharf. The message was clear: it’s time for Barclays to drop JBS and stop funding animal cruelty.
Every year, Barclays channels billions of its customers’ money into JBS. By investing in factory farming, they are contributing to harm against animals, people, and the planet.
We are demanding that this support ends. Help us by adding your voice.
Tell Barclays to stop funding animal cruelty
Barclays is the UK’s biggest investor in factory farming, using their customers’ money to pour billions into JBS, the world’s largest meat producer and one of the worst offenders for animal cruelty and environmental destruction.
JBS Is Making a Killing. Help Us Stop It.
World Animal Protection is fighting to expose JBS’s true costs - to animals, to the planet, and to anyone who invests in its future. Every pound you give funds investigations, campaigns, and the global pressure needed to hold JBS accountable.