This investigation is a collaboration between The Guardian, Reporter Brasil, and Unearthed. It comes off the back of evidence released by Greenpeace Aotearoa which definitively links Fonterra’s palm kernel suppliers to recent illegal operations and deforestation in Indonesia, despite Fonterra’s own zero-deforestation by 2025 pledge.

"Industrial livestock companies like JBS and Fonterra continue banking billions while their supply chains devastate vital ecosystems and drive climate breakdown," says Greenpeace Aotearoa spokesperson Amanda Larsson.

JBS has the capacity to slaughter around 75,000 cows, 13.8 million chickens, 147,000 hogs, 23,500 lambs and 217 tons of fish a day.

The company’s vast Amazon supply chain remains rife with deforestation, with recent conservative estimates linking the company to as much as 200,000 hectares of deforestation in its direct supply chain and 1.5 million hectares in its indirect chain in Brazil between 2008 and 2020.

The Brazilian behemoth announced in 2022 that it would eliminate all Amazon deforestation from its supply chains by the end of 2025. However, ranchers interviewed for The Guardian investigation described a system ‘riddled with loopholes’, with most asserting that a traceable, deforestation-free supply chain by the end of this year was impossible to achieve.

Larsson says: "The world’s rainforests are home to some of the most magnificent creatures, from jaguars and sloths in the Amazon to orangutans and tigers in the paradise rainforests of Southeast Asia. They’re also the lungs of the earth, helping us in our fight against the worst of the climate crisis.

"Industrial livestock farming is driving endangered creatures to extinction and pulling the plug on one of humanity’s most important life support systems - the world’s rainforests."

Greenpeace is calling on governments and regulators to step up and start holding industrial livestock companies responsible for the damage they are causing.

In early April, Greenpeace Aotearoa took action against the importation of palm kernel due to its links to rainforest destruction. Four activists shut down operations inside the main storage facility of Fonterra’s primary supplier of palm kernel, preventing a shipment of thirty thousand tonnes of Indonesian palm kernel from offloading at the Port of Taranaki.

"People all around the world care deeply about nature. That’s why companies like Fonterra and JBS make a big song and dance about their deforestation-free pledges. But in reality, these giant agri-businesses are still driving rainforests to destruction, leaving everyday people in the dark," says Larsson.

"The destruction is systemic, and so is the greenwash used to cover it up. We’re calling on Fonterra to cut their ties to deforestation and end the use of palm kernel across all of their farms in Aotearoa."