JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, has reversed its commitment to achieve net zero in its beef enterprise by 2040, revealed at the release of its 2025 sustainability report.
Its reasoning was explained by global chief sustainability officer Jason Weller in a statement on the company website.
It referred to the thinking behind the announcement to go fully net zero back in 2021 and how it now believes that this isn’t achievable.
He said: “In 2021, JBS announced a net zero by 2040 ambition to signal urgency and collaboration across the food system. That ambition reflected a sincere belief that agriculture must be part of the climate solution. That belief has not changed.”
However, there is a now a realisation that this ambition is beyond the company's ability to deliver, given the number of people involved in its production chain.
He explained that “the further we got into execution, the clearer it became that a net zero goal spanning hundreds of thousands of independent agricultural producers across tens of millions of hectares in dozens of countries – each with different practices, different baselines and no standardised measurement infrastructure – is an immense challenge”.
JBS emphasised that it isn’t “walking away from the challenges” and declared that “JBS is sharpening its climate goals around the portion of our footprint where we have the clearest responsibility”.
That means that it is focusing its efforts on reducing scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, which are directly under their control.
For these, a 30% reduction by 2030 and a 70% reduction by 2050 is the target against a 2019 baseline. These targets will guide investment.
Antibiotic use
With the EU ban on imports from Brazil due to come into effect from September because of antibiotic use in animal feed, there has been a split between producers and processors in Brazil on how to respond.
The processing industry had been lobbying government to ban the use of antibiotics in animal feed to comply with EU regulations. However, this has met strong resistance at producer level and there has been a counter-lobby from several farmer representative organisations.
Even if their use was banned immediately, it still wouldn’t meet the EU standard, which requires non-use over the lifetime of an animal.
A ban starting now would only succeed in making beef from calves born after the ban eligible, which would mean Brazilian beef would be effectively excluded for close to two years minimum.
Now that Brazil has effectively filled its Chinese quota, it is focused on maintaining and developing other markets.
Historically, the EU was its main export market and it remains one of its larger export markets, with potential to increase with the Mercosur trade deal.
It will be interesting to note if Brazil does introduce a ban and if it does, how the EU will react.
Meanwhile, the reversal of JBS on its climate ambitions is a recognition that its original targets were unrealistic, given so much had to be achieved by suppliers and outside its direct control.
Its revised policy is much more limited in ambition, but realistically achievable.
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