You might not recognise their name, but chances are you’ve had their food in your fridge or in your local restaurant. 

Headquartered in the Netherlands, JBS is the largest meat company on earth. It is controlled by billionaire brothers whose companies have pleaded guilty to bribery, been forced to pay millions to settle labour rights violations cases, and whose supply chain has been linked to massive deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. JBS is also a massive polluter, estimated to be responsible for more climate wrecking methane emissions than oil giants Shell and ExxonMobil combined.

Why JBS’s US$6 billion Nigeria expansion is a climate and human rights threat

Right now, JBS is engaged in a $6 billion global expansion, with almost half earmarked for Nigeria, from where it plans to bring its destructive industrial livestock model to sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. Community groups in Nigeria fear that the expansion will cause irreversible environmental damage and threaten access to land and water that local communities depend on for food security – all to line the pockets of wealthy international elites. 

With a track record like this, it’s easy to see why JBS prefers to stay in the shadows. It has long shirked corporate transparency while peddling empty promises. Its approach to Nigeria appears no different. Information published about its plans is extremely limited and despite the efforts of community groups in Nigeria, no environmental or social impact assessments have been published.

That’s why we need to drag them into the light.

Dragging JBS industrial meat expansion in Nigeria out of the shadows

Earlier this year, Greenpeace Netherlands activists took over JBS’ first shareholder meeting on Dutch soil to deliver a letter demanding they disclose the truth about their expansion plans. Using a new Dutch law which allows access to certain corporate data for the purpose of building litigation against a company, JBS were given 21 days to hand over files relating to the climate, nature and human rights impacts of its historic operations and its planned expansion.

Just hours before the deadline, JBS responded in its usual way: denying responsibility, refusing transparency, and completely dismissing anyone who dares to challenge them. JBS ignored the voices of thousands of Greenpeace supporters who emailed in support of our action and all those in Nigeria whose livelihoods are on the line.

Greenpeace Netherlands hoped it wouldn’t come to this. They didn’t want to trouble a judge with this matter. But JBS’ intransigence has left them no choice. Today, Greenpeace Netherlands has submitted a petition to a Dutch court asking it to force JBS to release the files. This is the first step towards stopping JBS’ dangerous plan to open new industrial frontiers in Africa and beyond before it even starts.

See you in court!

JBS appears to believe that despite moving to the Netherlands, it doesn’t need to follow Dutch rules. Today’s legal action aims to prove it wrong – and lay the ground for a first major climate and nature lawsuit against the dangerous expansion of the global meat industry.

Greenpeace Netherlands believes that JBS’ historic business practices and its future expansion plans are inconsistent with the company’s climate and biodiversity obligations and therefore breach Dutch duty of care, a legal obligation requiring companies to act in line with international human rights law. 

This is the basis of groundbreaking litigation that Greenpeace Netherlands is building against JBS. Today’s action brings us one step closer to that goal. If the judge rules in Greenpeace’s favour, it will be a huge victory for transparency against corporate interest. And it will provide Greenpeace Netherlands with crucial information to robustly challenge JBS’ dangerous business model in court and hold it to account before its global expansion causes further harm.

JBS tears up climate and nature pledges – act now!

This legal intervention couldn’t have come at a more crucial time. Just weeks ago, JBS scrapped flagship commitments to eradicate deforestation from its supply chains and reach Net Zero emissions by 2040. With them, safeguards for traditional communities and Indigenous peoples may well also be gone.

Make no mistake, these were always empty promises that JBS was never realistically going to deliver. But now JBS appears to have given its supply chain carte blanche for the wholesale sacrifice of ecosystems from the Amazon to its new frontiers in sub-Saharan Africa, while abandoning responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions exceeding those of Spain, a country of nearly 50 million people. Its expansion plans will balloon these impacts even further.

We can’t let JBS get away with it. And that’s where you can help.

We believe that public interest must come before commercial confidentiality, that corporate impunity must come to an end and that private wealth accumulation should never trump a healthy planet. We believe states like the Netherlands which host multinational corporations must hold them accountable – wherever they operate in the world. 

But we need a massive wave of public support to show the courts the strength of global concern about JBS’ plans. 

Stand in solidarity with local communities fighting the corporate takeover. Stand up for nature and the climate. Help us stop the new wave of destruction before it starts.

Take the world’s biggest meat company to court

We need to stop the expansion of the world’s largest meat company. Join the People vs. Big Ag.

Join now

Daniela Montalto is a Global Campaigner at Greenpeace UK based in London.

Amsterdam, Netherlands – Greenpeace Netherlands has petitioned a Dutch court seeking to compel meat giant JBS to disclose information in order to challenge its business policies in court. This includes its planned US$ 6 billion global expansion, of which almost half is earmarked for Nigeria.

Elizabeth Atieno, Food Campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, said: “JBS’ meat empire expanded hand-in-glove with Amazon destruction, colossal emissions, human rights and corruption scandals, all with barely a semblance of transparency. This is the business model it wants to export to sub-Saharan Africa. JBS promises food security, but its expansion in Nigeria risks causing irreversible environmental damage and the displacement of smallholder farmers to line the pockets of wealthy global elites.

“Nigerians know well from the legacy of companies like Shell the destructive impact wrought by unchecked corporate power. As Greenpeace Africa has argued before the African Court of Human Rights, states with jurisdiction over multinationals must hold those corporate actors accountable – wherever they operate in the world. We welcome this bold legal action: the Netherlands and other European states must not be safe havens for corporations like JBS seeking to evade their responsibilities.”

In light of JBS’ longstanding failure to publish accurate and reliable information on its climate, nature and human rights impacts or its expansion plans, Greenpeace Netherlands views accessing this data as a necessary precursor to formal litigation in order to support its case. The case has the potential to be the first climate litigation of this scale against the livestock industry. This could set a major precedent for future legal challenges against the industrial agriculture sector, a major source of global emissions, particularly of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, responsible for 0.5°C of warming since the Industrial Revolution.[1]

Marieke Vellekoop, Executive Director at Greenpeace Netherlands, said: “In a month where JBS has thrown its flagship environmental commitments onto the scrap heap, JBS’ disdain for basic transparency only adds to the impression that this meat giant has something to hide and is desperate to prevent its expansion plans from going public. We were hoping we wouldn’t have to trouble a judge with this matter, but JBS has left us no choice but to seek our right to information through the Dutch courts.

“JBS appears to believe that despite moving to the Netherlands, our rules do not apply to it. This legal action aims to prove it wrong – and lay the ground for a first major climate and nature lawsuit against the dangerous expansion of the global meat industry.“

At the centre of the dispute is JBS’ planned US$ 2.5 billion investment in industrial livestock production in Nigeria.[2] Civil society groups in Nigeria have raised urgent warnings that the aggressive expansion will threaten local food security, drive regional instability, and accelerate ecological degradation. There is no available evidence that JBS has conducted any impact assessments or community consultations in Nigeria, and local efforts to gather more information via Freedom of Information requests have reportedly been ignored.[3]

The escalation to the courts follows the refusal of JBS, the world’s largest meat company, to comply with a formal disclosure demand delivered by Greenpeace Netherlands in April. The environmental group is utilising new Dutch legislation, which grants parties with a legitimate interest the right to demand access to specific corporate data necessary to build litigation against Dutch companies.[4]

Greenpeace Netherlands’ lawyers allege that JBS’ historic business practices and future expansion plans are inconsistent with the company’s climate and biodiversity obligations and represent a breach of its Dutch duty of care, which requires companies to act in line with international human rights law.[5]

If the court rules in favor of Greenpeace Netherlands, it is entitled to seek the required information in the form of documents and from senior JBS figures under oath, raising the prospect of the Batista brothers being forced to testify in Dutch court. JBS reincorporated as a Dutch entity (JBS N.V.) last year to facilitate a dual listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

In April, JBS was forced to temporarily suspend its first annual general meeting since moving its headquarters to Amsterdam after it was disrupted by dozens of Greenpeace Netherlands activists. 

Last week, JBS scrapped two flagship commitments to reach Net Zero emissions by 2040 and eradicate deforestation from its supply chain. It also removed any explicit reference to Indigenous lands from all of its current policies. Greenpeace Netherlands is concerned this indicates JBS is seeking to expand unconstrained by the climate, nature and human rights impacts of its business.

ENDS

Notes:

[1] The livestock sector is estimated to be responsible for 31% of global methane emissions (more than oil and gas operations). In comparison to CO2, methane is shorter lived (around 12 years) but has a much stronger ability to trap heat in the atmosphere over its lifetime: it has approximately 80 times more climate impact than CO2 when measured over 20 years. This means that changes in methane emissions have a more rapid effect on the climate than changes in CO2. See Greenpeace Netherlands letter to JBS dated 30 April 2026.

[2] JBS announcement

[3] Experts raise concerns over the risks of industrial animal farming (The Sun Nigeria) 

[4] Simplification and modernisation of Dutch evidence law (Fieldfisher)

[5] Greenpeace Netherlands petition to Dutch court available on request. Media briefing with further details on JBS expansion plans, including in Nigeria.

Contacts:

Joe Evans, Agriculture Global Comms Lead at Greenpeace UK,  +44 7890 595387, jevans@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace International Press Desk, +31 (0)20 718 2470 (available 24 hours), pressdesk.int@greenpeace.org

You might not always see soy, but it could be in your chocolate, your shampoo, your cooking oil. Soy is in almost everything, which is exactly why almost no one asks where it comes from.

‘Contains soy. May contain deforestation.’ is the alert from a new Greenpeace Brazil campaign. Without a clear commitment to zero deforestation from across the sector, it is difficult to guarantee that the soy used in thousands of everyday products does not come from a deforested area in the Amazon rainforest.

Where does the soy we consume without knowing it come from?

There is a trail, and it leads straight to the forest, with every purchase, on every shelf, to every company that built a brand on the word sustainability and then agreed to dismantle the greatest mechanism that made that word verifiable: the Soy Moratorium. The soy trade in the Amazon is dominated by a handful of large companies like Cargill, Bunge, Amaggi, and ADM among them, that decide, in practice, whether or not the soy that reaches you is or not free from deforestation.

Could these items be on your shopping list?

Soy is the base of obvious food like oil, plant-based milk, textured protein, but it is also a ‘hidden’ ingredient. Soyby-products, such as soy oil and soy lecithin, are found in a massive number of processed products like biscuits, cosmetics, and animal feed that turns into meat, eggs, and milk on your table, alongside many other processed goods we wouldn’t even imagine.

We could be consuming soy produced in deforested areas of the Amazon without even knowing it. That is why a clear commitment from across the entire sector is essential.

What has changed in the protection of the Amazon against soy?

For 20 years, an environmental agreement called the Soy Moratorium prevented the purchase of soy grown in areas of the Amazon deforested after 2008. The mechanism worked, and the figures for the reduction in deforestation linked to the grain during this period proved it: production advanced, exports grew, and Brazil became the world’s largest soy producer.

The Moratorium proved that it is possible to produce without deforesting, but its effectiveness has always bothered those who want to remove barriers for predatory production. So, in recent years, the battleground has shifted and moved into politics.

As a result of an agribusiness movement that wanted to see the end of the Moratorium, Brazilian state governments in Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Maranhão, and Tocantins passed laws withdrawing tax benefits from companies with environmental criteria that are stricter than what legislation requires, and CADE – Administrative Council for Economic Defense – opened an investigation into allegations that the agreement constitutes anti-competitive practice.

In January 2026, the very companies that sustained the agreement abandoned it. ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, and Amaggi, among others, which for years used the reputation of deforestation-free soy to access demanding markets, gave in to tax benefits and political pressure and set aside the instrument that helped build that advantage. Thus, the guarantee of zero deforestation in the Amazon soy supply chain, which lasted for nearly two decades, ceased to exist.

Instead of backing down, companies should expand their commitments.

The Amazon, without the protection that was lost in early 2026, is at serious risk. Without clear zero-deforestation criteria, poor transparency, and weakened monitoring, soy will once again eat the Amazon.

According to the article The Rise and Fall of the Amazon Soy Moratorium, from Science Magazine, potential impacts of soy on the Amazon without a zero-deforestation commitment include:

• 1.4 million hectares (2 million football pitches) projected to be deforested by 2036 without the Moratorium
• Another 9.1 million hectares (the size of Portugal) suitable for soy could be legally deforested
• 28.7 million hectares of unallocated public forests (an area the size of Italy) are at risk of land grabbing and illegal deforestation

Additionally, 1.7 million hectares deforested before July 2008 in soy farms remain available for use, instead of deforesting new areas. Showing that continuing implementing Zero Deforestation is completely feasible.

If it contains soy, it may contain deforestation. And those who decided that the Amazon is worth less than the next harvest need to be accountable for it. We cannot accept anything less than zero deforestation.

That is why we are demanding action:

Companies that trade soy (traders) such as Cargill, Bunge, Amaggi, and ADM: Recommit to zero deforestation in the Amazon – monitoring production right from its source on the farm and rejecting soy from farms deforested after 2008. Expand these commitments to other threatened Brazilian biomes, like the Cerrado, and to other products at risk of deforestation, such as maize.

Banks, buyers, and retailers: Commit to the same zero deforestation requirements. Do not finance or buy products linked to deforestation.

Click here to sign our petition (in Portuguese).

Caroline Haddad is a Communications and Engagement Forests Campaigner at Greenpeace Brazil.