JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking company, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on June 13, just six months after its U.S. subsidiary, Pilgrim’s Pride, made a $5 million donation to Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration, the single largest contribution to the event.
The Brazil-founded company has sought a U.S. listing for more than a decade, and in its latest attempt faced a nearly two-year delay imposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a federal agency responsible for regulating the stock market, amid pressure from civil society groups over the company’s history of corruption and its role in Amazon deforestation.
The NYSE listing is “a catastrophe for the planet,” Alex Wijeratna, senior director at the U.S.-based environmental nonprofit Mighty Earth, one of the main signatories of letters raising concerns to the SEC, said in a statement following the listing. “Giving JBS access to billions of dollars of new funding will serve to supercharge its climate-wrecking operations and war on nature.”
Today, JBS operates more than 250 meat facilities, with many located in the United States and Brazil. It supplies beef, poultry and pork to global food giants including McDonald’s, Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour.
Within two days of Trump appointee Paul Atkins assuming the role of SEC chair on April 21, JBS’ long-stalled bid for a U.S. listing was approved amid aggressive changes in the agency described as a “reckless game of regulatory Jenga.”
In a May 19 letter, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed JBS and Pilgrim’s Pride on whether the donation was meant to accrue political favor. “Your large donations … and the Trump Administration’s series of actions that benefit your companies, raise serious concerns about a potential quid-pro-quo arrangement,” Warren wrote in a May 19 letter.
In 2017, Joesley and Wesley Batista, the brothers behind JBS, confessed to bribing nearly 1,900 politicians in Brazil resulting in a 10.3 billion real ($1.9 billion) fine. In 2020, the brothers also agreed to pay a $27 million settlement in the U.S. for related anti-corruption charges.
More recently, an Environmental Investigation Agency report found JBS had bought cattle illegally raised on Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon. Earlier this year, the company was also linked to widespread destruction of jaguar habitat in the Pantanal biome of western Brazil.
JBS replied to Mongabay’s request for comment with an emailed statement from their subsidiary, Pilgrim’s Pride: “As a U.S.-based food company, Pilgrim’s was pleased to support the 2025 inauguration ceremony. We have a long bipartisan history of participating in the civic process and look forward to working with the Administration to create opportunities for American farmers and provide safe, affordable food for American families.”
The White House Press Office did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment.
Banner image: Workers prep poultry at the meatpacking company JBS in the Brazilian state of Paraná. Image by Eraldo Peres/Associated Press.
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