AERIAL IMAGES SHOW hundreds of dead trees, without leaves and with whitish stains on their branches. The scene on April 14 corresponds to an illegally deforested area in Brazil of 81,200 hectares – the equivalent of almost four times the size of Amsterdam. According to the Brazilian authorities, the destruction was caused by Claudecy Oliveira Lemes and is the largest ever recorded in Mato Grosso, a state that brings together some of the country’s main frontiers of cattle ranching expansion. 

In April, Repórter Brasil had already shown that, throughout 2023, Lemes supplied units of JBS, Brazil’s largest beef industry. Now, a new report published by the NGO Mighty Earth reveals that in addition to JBS, two other large meatpackers in the country – Marfrig and Minerva – have also bought animals from the cattle rancher over the last few years.

The report highlights that the industrial plants supplied by the cattle rancher are suppliers to the main retail groups operating in Brazil, including Carrefour, Casino, Grupo Mateus, and Sendas. The study was produced in partnership with the Dutch organization AidEnvironment, and with additional research by Repórter Brasil.

João Gonçalves, Senior Director for Brazil at Mighty Earth said “the deliberate killing of trees and wildlife in the Pantanal by the aerial spraying of a highly toxic compound of ‘Agent Orange’ is a war on nature, being waged by the meat industry.”

Mighty Earth’s new study found that around 86% of the recent deforestation on cattle farms supplying the biggest meat packers like JBS, Marfrig and Minerva was in the Pantanal. “To protect the Pantanal and other precious biomes in Brazil, the big meat companies and their retail customers need to get full control of both their direct and indirect supply chains to the farm level and cut all ties with ranchers hellbent on the destruction of nature for profit,” said Gonçalves.

The devastation on eleven of the cattle rancher’s farms has been investigated by police and environmental authorities since 2022. Twenty-five types of pesticides were sprayed into the air to destroy the native vegetation. The aim was to annihilate the tallest vegetation to expand cattle breeding in the area. The herbicide 2,4-D is one of the pesticides used. It is one of the compounds in “Agent Orange”, known for its destructive potential and used by the United States in the Vietnam War. The deforested area is located in the municipality of Barão do Melgaço in the Pantanal. The biome is the largest freshwater wetland in the world, part of which has been recognized as a World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve by Unesco and home to keystone species like the jaguar.

Supplying JBS

Lemes also owns Fazenda Monique Vale, located in Pedra Preta, a municipality 232 km from where the chemical deforestation was found. The property sent cattle to be slaughtered at two JBS units in 2023.

Data from Animal Transit Guides accessed by Repórter Brasil show that Fazenda Monique Vale regularly received animals from other Lemes properties for their final fattening before slaughter. Among the cattle suppliers are the Soberana, Santa Lúcia, Indiana, and Reunidas São Jerônimo farms, 4 of the 11 properties that suffered chemical deforestation in the past two years.

JBS said that six farms registered in Lemes’ name have been blocked by the company, without clarifying, however, which properties and the date on which the blockage occurred. “In all biomes, the company’s Responsible Raw Material Purchasing Policy prevents the acquisition of animals from properties with illegal deforestation, indigenous lands, quilombola territories, or environmental conservation units,” said the meatpacker. Read the full statement here.

The producer Lemes was contacted through his lawyers but did not respond to Repórter Brasil’s inquiries by the time this report was published.

Connections with Marfrig and Minerva

In 2020, the Mato Grosso Environment Secretariat (Sema-MT) embargoed 1,370 hectares of Fazenda Soberana, one of the farms that suffered chemical deforestation in April. The embargo came after the agency identified illegal deforestation between 2015 and 2019. 

The cattle rancher was fined 1,3 million USD for the destruction and signed an agreement with the state prosecutor’s office pledging not to carry out further deforestation on the property. However, a police investigation showed that the agreement was breached and new deforestations were recorded with the use of pesticides.

The Mighty Earth report, published on July 30, 2024, showed that 3,447 hectares of native vegetation were destroyed on Fazenda Soberana between October and November 2023, according to an analysis of satellite images and fire alerts from Deter system, from the National Institute for Space Research’s (Inpe).

The document also points out that, even after the first illegal deforestation, recorded in 2015 according to Sema-MT, Fazenda Soberana supplied cattle to Marfrig. The animals raised on the property were also sent to farms supplying two Minerva units in Mato Grosso.

Marfrig told Repórter Brasil that the last supply of animals from Fazenda Soberana happened in January 2019. “In addition to not having made any other purchases, at the time of slaughter the property met all the socio-environmental criteria considered in the official protocol,” said the meatpacker. The company explained that since March 2019 the slaughterhouse responsible for buying the animals in Paranatinga no longer belongs to Marfrig. 

Minerva said that Fazenda Soberana is not registered in the meatpacker’s database therefore does not buy animals from the farm. The company, however, did not clarify whether it can be sure that animals raised on this farm or other recently deforested properties of the cattle rancher do not reach Minerva’s units via Fazenda Monique Vale. “Monitoring indirect suppliers is the biggest challenge facing the entire sector,” the meatpacker said in the statement sent to Repórter Brasil.

Fazenda Monique Vale last supplied Minerva in September 2020. The meatpacker carries out geospatial analyses before purchasing the cattle and studies carried out at the time indicated that the property met the socio-environmental criteria adopted by Minerva. The “absence of illegal deforestation or illegal conversion of ecosystems within the perimeter of the supplying property” is one of the requirements of Minerva’s cattle purchasing criteria, which apply to all Brazilian biomes. 

In 2022, the Mato Grosso Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into the illegal deforestation of 127 hectares between 2008 and 2021 on the Monique Vale farm. According to records from Prodes, an Inpe program that monitors deforestation in Brazil via satellite images, the largest deforestation on the farm was recorded in 2017, with the suppression of 117 hectares. In his legal defense, Lemes said that the area deforested in 2017 had been sold to someone else and was no longer part of the property. However, the cattle rancher himself included this area in a Rural Environmental Registry for the property in June 2022. In October 2022, a month before the investigation into deforestation at Fazenda Monique Vale, Lemes changed the registration again, subtracting the area deforested in 2017. The producer did not respond to questions from Repórter Brasil.Minerva said that Lemes had been placed on Minerva’s block list “to guarantee our commitment to zero illegal deforestation”. Read the full statement here.

From meat-packing plants to supermarkets

Meat reaches hundreds of supermarkets across Brazil supplied by meatpackers JBS, Marfrig and Minerva.

The research carried out by Mighty Earth used data from the Pasture to Plate app to trace the origin of 1,665 meat products sold in 124 stores of the Carrefour, Casino (parent company of the Pão de Açúcar Group), Mateus Group, and Sendas (owner of Assaí Atacadista) supermarket chains, the main retail groups in Brazil in 2023, according to the Brazilian Supermarket Association (ABRAS). 

The data collected by the app shows which slaughterhouse the meat sold in the stores of the four retail chains came from. In total, these products originated from 157 slaughterhouses, says the report.

Mighty Earth selected a sample of direct and indirect cattle suppliers from the slaughterhouses of JBS, Marfrig, and Minerva, the country’s largest meatpackers. The analysis aimed to identify whether suppliers to the three companies raised or bought cattle from deforested properties in the Pantanal, Amazon, and Cerrado. The data shows that they did. 

Mighty Earth’s analysis found the deforestation of 38,248 hectares of native vegetation linked to 3,113 direct suppliers of the three meatpacking companies between 2021 and 2023. Among the 8,433 indirect suppliers analyzed, the deforestation detected was 72,457 hectares.

“The livestock sector remains the main driver of deforestation in Brazil, and these retailers continue to contribute to greenhouse gas emissions that exacerbate the effects of extreme weather events,” analyzes Cristiane Mazetti, spokesperson for Greenpeace Brazil. “We are seeing these consequences every day. Now it’s the floods in Rio Grande do Sul, soon it will be a severe drought in the Amazon.”

According to Mazetti, both retailers selling the final product and slaughterhouses purchasing cattle raised in deforested areas are lagging in fulfilling commitments made to civil society. “They made commitments to monitor the entire chain, but they haven’t fulfilled them. If these companies are serious about their socio-environmental and climate policies, they should monitor and trace the livestock chain, which are well-known drivers of deforestation.”

Repórter Brasil reached out to the retail networks mentioned in the Mighty Earth report.

Grupo Pão de Açúcar stated it has had a Socio-Environmental Beef Purchasing Policy since 2016 and that the Rural Environmental Registry of Fazenda Soberana is blocked in the retailer’s trading system.

Assaí Atacadista said it has not had commercial relations with Claudecy Lemes’ property for “years.” When it did, the network stated, supplies complied with the legislation and guidelines assumed in the Boi na Linha program, an initiative of Imaflora Institute in partnership with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office to promote good practices in the sector, such as conducting audits and monitoring. In addition to Assaí Atacadista, Grupo Pão de Açúcar, and Carrefour Brasil are also signatories to Boi na Linha.

Grupo Carrefour Brasil stated it does not purchase meat from Fazenda Soberana, without mentioning indirect supply. The company also mentioned conducting satellite image monitoring and socio-environmental compliance analysis of 100% of its beef suppliers. Read the complete responses here.

Grupo Mateus did not respond to Repórter Brasil’s inquiries by the time of this report’s deadline.

Banco do Brasil Financing

The chain of responsibilities is not limited to the private sector. A survey conducted by Greenpeace, based on public data from the Brazilian Central Bank, showed that rancher Lemes had access to four loans with subsidized interest rates from the Brazilian government for investments in Fazenda Soberana.

The rural credit, for 1.8 million USD, was granted by Banco do Brasil, a mixed-capital banking institution. The first loan was granted to the producer in March 2021, more than a year after Fazenda Soberana was included in the list of properties embargoed for illegal deforestation in Mato Grosso.

It was only in June 2023 that a regulation from the Central Bank of Brazil began to prohibit the granting of loans to producers with areas embargoed for deforestation throughout the country. Before that, only farms located in the Amazon had this restriction. However, the new regulation explicitly mentions the blocking of financing only for properties with irregularities identified by Ibama, the national environmental monitoring agency.

As a result, a possibility is opened for producers who have illegally deforested to continue to be eligible for financing for other farms or their farms with embargoes, if these have been registered by state authorities – as in the case of producer Claudecy Lemes. “It’s a very concerning loophole,” summarizes Cristiane Mazetti, spokesperson for Greenpeace Brazil.

Unprotected Biome

The deforested farms are located in the Pantanal. One of the most important freshwater reservoirs in the world, this biome helps in soil conservation and climate stability. Besides Brazil, the 250,000 km² of the Pantanal covers parts of Bolivia and Paraguay, occupying an area equivalent to the combined size of Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal, and the Netherlands.

Last year, 49,600 hectares were deforested in the Pantanal, representing an increase of 59.2% compared to 2022. 

In December 2024, a new European Union law will come into effect, prohibiting the import of soy, cattle, palm oil, coffee, wood, rubber, and cocoa from areas deforested after December 31, 2020—without differentiating whether the deforestation was legal or illegal. However, the legislation does not include areas considered “non-forested,” a concept from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). As a result, 76% of the Pantanal and 73% of the Cerrado are excluded from the scope of the law.

:: Read also: Brazilian state permits major deforestation exceeding Paris’ size ::

Brazilian livestock farming has its trade agreement to prevent deforestation. The “TAC da Carne,” established in 2009, requires slaughterhouses to commit to not purchasing cattle from areas illegally deforested after 2008. However, this pact only applies to farms and slaughterhouses located in the Amazon.

Brazilian environmental regulations for cutting native vegetation are also more lenient. Farms located in the Amazon must preserve 80% of the property. This percentage drops from 60% to 40% if the property is located in the Pantanal.