SAO PAULO (Reuters) – JBS said on Thursday it achieved 94% compliance in the livestock purchasing index of the so-called statutory Amazon audit courses, organized by the federal public ministry.
According to JBS, the compliance index was “the best result to date,” while the company aims to achieve 100%.
The conduct of audits reflects the commitments signed by JBS and other companies regarding the social and environmental conditions of the properties from which their animals are sourced.
“Companies that don’t adapt and don’t conduct audits are hurting Amazon,” attorney Riccardo Negrini said in a statement.
Beef production is linked to deforestation in Brazil, where land grabbers have been cutting down the Amazon rainforest for decades to create pastures.
JBS also commented that this is the first time that the operation has integrated results from four states in which the company has units: Pará, Mato Grosso, Rondonia and Acre, as well as Amazonas, where the company has no factories.
In Pará, where five audit cycles have already been conducted, JBS indicated that it had improved its compliance rate to 94%. In the previous session, JBS’s percentage reached 83.27% in this federal unit.
“We are satisfied with the development. But our goal is to achieve 100% compliance. The most important thing is to be clear about the paths we must take to get there,” said JBS Brasil’s Sustainability Director, Liege Correa.
JBS says it has been using geospatial monitoring for nearly 15 years to ensure compliance with its social and environmental obligations, and assesses more than 70,000 potential livestock suppliers in Brazil every day.
The regime covers 61 million hectares, almost three times the land of the UK, and seeks to prevent JBS suppliers from operating on deforested areas, indigenous lands, conservation units or quilombola lands. It is also prohibited to purchase livestock from suppliers who use slavery-like labor, or who impose environmental bans.
JBS said the audits presented today were conducted during the period from 1 July 2020 to 31 December 2021 in Pará, Acre and Rondonia, and for the whole of 2021 in Mato Grosso.
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