Project summary

Brazilian company JBS is the world’s biggest meat processor. Beyond beef and pork, JBS also produces poultry, lamb, processed meats, hides, leather, and various by-products like feeds and biodiesel. This commercial and industrial success comes at a hefty cost to our planet and the animals fueling JBS’s reckless growth.

Given its size and global scale – the company employs over 250,000 people across more than 300 production units in over 150 countries – JBS might be the world’s worst offender when it comes to animal cruelty.

Animal cruelty is a core aspect of JBS’s business. In the USA, JBS has the highest total animal welfare violations. And aside from profiteering off abusing caged animals, JBS also inflicts immense cruelty on wild animals.  JBS’s documented destruction of the Brazilian Cerrado, Amazon, and Pantanal is a direct threat to thousands of species, including precious endangered animals.

Ekō (formerly SumOfUs) is a corporate accountability movement of 23 million people from over 100 countries, using the systems designed to keep corporate power in check – shareholder resolutions, consumer voices, regulatory bodies, and government oversight – in creative, empowering ways to fight and win global campaigns that expose human rights abuses, defend public interests, and make corporations more accountable and responsive. By directly pressuring key decision makers, Ekō campaigns have noticeably shifted the policies, products, and actions of corporations over the last 13 years.

We can mobilize our 23-million-strong global membership to force JBS to elevate its animal welfare practices by using various tactics such as regulatory pressure in Brazil, the USA, and the European Union but also through direct targeting of JBS’s clients and financiers globally.

What are this project's goals and how will you achieve them?

To put an end to JBS’s animal cruelty we need to stop its growth, and now is the perfect moment to do so. JBS's planned IPO has faced drawbacks and scrutiny over the past year. Civil society groups and investors have sent complaints to the SEC, and New York’s Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against JBS for misleading environmental claims. All of this forced JBS to delay its IPO. Our first goal is to make sure this IPO never happens. Ekō members can help make sure that's the case by focusing their efforts on the Securities and Exchange Commission and calling for the IPO to be blocked. JBS’s attempt to list on the New York Stock Exchange would give the company access to even more capital from U.S. investors, further fueling the expansion of its inhumane and unsustainable factory farming operations. We have already joined a global campaign to block JBS’s IPO based on misleading sustainability and animal welfare claims by the company. 

Given JBS’s history of greenwashing and misrepresenting its animal welfare problem, we can expect a massive push from the company around COP30 in Brazil. With the power of our community in Brazil and beyond, our investigators, and savvy media tactics – we can expose JBS’ antics and neutralize its impact through public pressure and advocacy with key COP officials, and push hard to ensure JBS is not included as part of Brazil’s climate delegation (our second goal) as it has been in previous years.

We can mobilize our members and partners in Europe to make sure the European Regulation on Deforestation-free Products is applied to block the imports of JBS products into the EU, which is our third goal.

Globally, Ekō members can also publicly target valuable customers (supermarkets such as Tesco, Costco, Walmart, and Carrefour; also fast food companies such as McDonald’s and Yum! Brands) and financiers (Santander, Barclays) who bankroll JBS’s cruel treatment of animals to pressure JBS to improve its policies and practices (our fourth goal).  

Now more than ever, we can end JBS’s reign of terror and cruelty against animals and force the meat giant to clean up its supply chain from animal abuse and destruction. Ekō is ready to mobilize its global, multilingual membership to target JBS and its business partners whether they are financiers or clients. We will use our power as customers, workers, and shareholders to expose JBS’s cruelty and push regulators to stop it in its tracks before it’s too late.

Some specific actions for this campaign might include: 

• Engage our 23 million members in digital mass mobilization actions such as: petitions, tweetstorms, email campaigns to company staff, phone campaigns to decision-makers, social media and LinkedIn actions, surveys, etc.

• Develop tactics for staff and would-be shareholder engagement.

• Encourage and share information with international institutions and financial actor regulators around adopting meaningful regulations for the sector to address animal welfare and tackle the climate crisis.

• Generate media coverage and conversation through creative actions and leafleting in front of companies’ headquarters, AGMs, and industry events.

• Place and/or contribute to op-eds and articles in both insurance and mainstream media.

• Organize fundraising campaigns for partners and specific actions.

• Provide training support for grassroots and frontline activists.

• Help to design and execute impactful live actions.

• Hyper-targeted digital ads.

• Support for legal actions.

• Additional research, commissioning reports.  

• Directly engage our target with letters, briefings, and regular updates.

How will this funding be used?

This funding will be used for campaigns staff and tactics in pursuit of the goals stated above. These expenses could include part of two campaigns directors' salaries, direct campaign expenses (digital and offline activities), technology expenses (CMS, CRM, servers, etc.), additional staff support (Ekō campaigners, data analysts, and external translators for key languages), etc.

Who is on your team and what's your track record on similar projects?

Ekō Executive Director Emma Ruby-Sachs is a strategist, lawyer, and writer, and was previously the Deputy Director at Avaaz, an environmental digital activism organization with more than 50 million members. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University and University of Toronto Faculty of Law and currently lives in Chicago.

We also have a staff of highly-experienced campaigns directors, campaign managers, a chief technology officer, translators, software engineers, and operations staff.

Our board of directors includes expert strategists, corporate campaigners, and nonprofit professionals.

In the sphere of animal welfare, we recently helped stop a major copper and gold mine in Alaska that would have endangered the 60 million wild sockeye salmon that come to Bristol Bay each year; garnered the support of over 30% of Woolworths’ shareholders, and almost 40% of Cole’s shareholders, as they railed against the boards' recommendations and supported Ekō-organized resolutions for the companies to address the impacts their farmed seafood, such as Macquarie Harbor salmon, has on endangered species (like the Maugean skate); campaigned to help get the export of live animals banned in the UK; and our petition opposing the world’s first octopus megafarm off the coast of Gran Canaria went viral, with over half a million Ekō members joining the cause and igniting a firestorm on social media (that campaign also contributed to California Governor Gavin Newsom signing the California Oppose Cruelty to Octopuses (OCTO) Act into law on September 27, 2024).

Beyond animal welfare, we have extensive experience getting corporations to divest from planet-destroying and socially-harmful projects. We’ve also had success getting governments to ban toxic pesticides, limit the exportation of plastics, and implement stronger environmental regulations, among other successful campaigns bringing corporate irresponsibility to light. We’ve won campaigns against corporate giants like Apple, LLoyd’s of London, Syngenta, Meta, BlueTriton, SCOR, Samling, Google, Uber, Adani, and many more.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails? (premortem)

The most likely cause of failure may be the failure to fundraise enough to achieve the larger goals of the project. Given that Ekō is well-established and able to use existing resources and networks, we could at the very least increase public awareness of the issues surrounding JBS on a low budget (with the minimum funding amount). Therefore, we would still be able to have positive impact by reaching the minimum raise goal, but it's unlikely the project would result in any real change to JBS's, and Big Ag more broadly, policies and practices without the funds necessary to cover staff time, direct campaign expenses, technology expenses, etc. in the lead up to COP30 and in its aftermath. The outcome of a failed project would be a more informed public and the potential for more impactful campaigning in the future.

Another cause of failure could be the timing of the campaign, especially in regards to the IPO and SEC involvement, as it intersects with the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States.

Ekō has led, and will continue to lead, successful animal welfare campaigns globally. The failure of this particular project would not nullify the rest of our impact, and we would likely try to target JBS again in the future when more funding could be secured.

What other funding are you or your project getting?

Ekō is not currently receiving any institutional funding for this specific project. We receive some institutional funding for other corporate campaigns. The vast majority of our funding comes from individual donations from our members.