JBS announces investments in environmental actions in Pará
29 | 10 | 2021
Even though the results of the recent Pará state TAC audit for 2018 and the first semester of 2019 were impacted by a recent change in criteria adopted by the Federal Prosecution Office (MPF, in Portuguese), JBS believes that it is important to adopt additional measures to strengthen its due diligence work in the state. Therefore, the company announces a set of actions with the objective of strengthening the sustainability of the cattle supply chain in Pará and expanding the adoption of good practices throughout the industry. The investments amount to R$ 5 million.
JBS clarifies that the results arise primarily from inaccuracies in definitions of the monitoring criteria and in the database used as the benchmark in the audit process.
As mentioned by the Federal Prosecution Office in the presentation of October 7th, JBS did not use the Prodes 2008 database in light of the following:
1. the Beef on Track Livestock Monitoring Protocol expressly refers to “Prodes 2009”, with the agreement of the MPF;
2. the Prodes 2008 base was not used in previous audits;
3. Prodes 2008 shouldn’t have contained deforestation data after 01/08/2008, and JBS has not received any formal communication about the existence of residual data in Prodes 2008 relating to a later period.
In any case, JBS has included new measures in its monitoring system and has blocked all supplier farms in Pará where the audit flagged irregularities. And, in mutual agreement with the MPF, the resources will be channeled to a series of initiatives within the State of Pará, including the CAR 2.0 project developed by the State Department for the Environment and Sustainability of Pará (Semas/PA) with the aim of automating and accelerating the analysis and verification of the Rural Environmental Register and the Environmental Regularization Program within the State.
The company has also expanded its Green Offices in Pará, doubling the operations to four units across the State. The JBS Green Offices provide free support for the environmental regularization of rural properties. Also, as part of the actions announced, the Green Offices will now engage in land title regularization on the properties of the suppliers in the State of Pará.
Enhancing the evaluation of sustainability criteria, JBS has agreed to audit 100% of cattle purchases in Pará.
In order to expand the adoption of socioenvironmental criteria by all links in the production chain, JBS will also step up the actions to encourage livestock farmers to sign up to the Transparent Livestock Farming Platform, which allows producers to analyze their supply chains using the same criteria employed by JBS, in a secure and confidential manner, thanks to the use of blockchain technology.
Escrito por: Oxigenweb