The Americas · 2020s
The Amazon cattle frontier
In the Amazon, forest is cleared for cattle pasture, and the beef and hides are sold abroad. The biggest exporter of Brazilian beef to the EU is JBS, the world's largest meatpacker. Global Witness found it was still buying from ranches linked to deforestation, and a US Senate inquiry concluded it had turned a blind eye. JBS denies this. In 2025 it listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
The EU has a law to keep goods from cleared forest off its market. It has been delayed twice, now to the end of 2026, and a draft change would take leather out of it. Meanwhile the EU has begun applying its trade deal with Brazil and its neighbours before its own court has ruled on it.
People who defend forest land are killed for it. Global Witness counted at least 124 land and environmental defenders killed around the world in 2025, 85% of them in Latin America.
- How it worked
- Take the land for export · Write rules that bind only others
- Who gained
- JBS and its shareholders, now on Wall Street; the banks that have underwritten its bonds; the European firms that buy the beef and leather.
- What it left
- Forest has been turned into pasture, and people have been killed defending it. The EU's law against the trade is still not in force.
- Sources