The world's biggest food company by revenue, a Brazilian meat-packing colossus. JBS generated $78bn in revenue last year, with around half its sales in America. It processes beef, poultry, pork, fish, eggs and plant-based meat.
JBS started in 1953 as a small slaughterhouse deep in Brazil's interior, run by José Batista Sobrinho. When Brazil began building its modernist capital, Brasília, nearby, Mr Batista supplied the construction workers with fresh beef. His sons Joesley and Wesley, neither of whom completed secondary school, took over the family firm in the early 2000s and expanded through a multi-billion-dollar acquisition spree financed partly by Brazil's national development bank. Their acquisitions included Pilgrim's Pride, an American poultry company, in 2009.
JBS listed on the New York Stock Exchange on June 13th 2025, having long traded at a discount to American-listed rivals on São Paulo's exchange. It opened a corporate entity in the Netherlands to issue two classes of share, one with ten times more voting power than the other, which could give the Batista brothers almost 85% of voting rights, up from 48%. America's leading advisory firms for institutional investors recommended that shareholders reject the listing, but it was narrowly approved. Since announcing the listing plan in 2023, JBS's shares have almost doubled. The dual-share structure made investors jittery, given the Batista family's history of legal troubles. Wesley Batista, who runs the business with his brother, rejects accusations of wrongdoing.
JBS's holding company, J&F, signed a plea deal with Brazilian prosecutors in 2017 and agreed to pay a fine of $2bn over 25 years for bribing officials to secure tax breaks and cheap loans. (A judge on Brazil's supreme court suspended the fine in 2023, arguing the deal may have been signed involuntarily.) In 2020 J&F agreed to pay over $250m in a plea deal with America's Department of Justice for using American bank accounts to pay bribes to Brazilian officials. The firm also paid a $27m fine for bribery related to its acquisition of Pilgrim's Pride. In 2021 Pilgrim's Pride pleaded guilty to fixing prices for broiler chickens and was fined more than $100m. Both Joesley and Wesley Batista were briefly jailed in Brazil in 2017 but later acquitted.
Human-rights and environmental charities say JBS has dragged its feet on tackling illegal deforestation in its supply chain. Mighty Earth, a Washington-based organisation, alleges that farms which directly supplied cattle to JBS slaughterhouses were linked to illegal deforestation in the Amazon between 2018 and 2024. From January 2026 JBS's direct suppliers will be obliged to provide information on the farms they buy cattle from. In Pará, an Amazon state with 26m head of cattle, JBS is helping to fund ear-tags for cows to improve tracking, though only 12,000 of the state's cattle have been tagged so far. JBS's Dutch corporate presence may expose it to climate litigation in the Netherlands.
Pilgrim's Pride, a JBS subsidiary, made a $5m contribution to Donald Trump's inauguration committee, the largest of any donor. JBS was hurt badly by the 50% tariff Trump placed on Brazilian imports in July 2025. Reuters reported that Trump recently met Joesley Batista, JBS's co-owner; the meeting came as firms affected by the tariffs sought to de-escalate the trade spat between the United States and Brazil. JBS has said that its meetings with public officials adhere to its code of conduct. JBS's listing plans provoked an unusual bipartisan coalition in Washington, with congressmen including Marco Rubio urging competition regulators to consider how the listing could "enhance its ability to engage in anti-competitive conduct".
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