The Scandal-Ridden Meatpacking Company Taking Over U.S. Markets
A meatpacking giant known for labor violations and bribery scandals just went public. Now, small farmers and independent ranchers are worried they’ll be further squeezed out of the market.
By Brock Hrehor, More Perfect Union
JBS, the Brazilian meatpacking conglomerate that’s garnered a reputation for its bribery-related scandals and child labor violations, just had its initial public offering with the New York Stock Exchange — spelling danger for independent ranchers, workers, and consumers across the country.
JBS’s history is one of intense growth, with the company seeking to acquire as many assets as possible and kicking aside legal and ethical concerns along the way. JBS was previously barred from accessing U.S. markets, and Joesley and Wesley Batista, the billionaire brothers behind the company, even served jail time after bribing more than 1,800 Brazilian politicians in exchange for government support.
In April, though, the firm’s bid to go public was approved by the SEC. The approval came through shortly after a subsidiary of JBS, Pilgrim’s Pride, donated a whopping $5 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. JBS also doubled its lobbying spending at the beginning of 2025.
“Is a donation like that a quid pro quo? I'm not sure I can be the judge of that, but what I can say is this: This is clearly a company and two billionaire top shareholders who have pleaded guilty and have a clear history of bribery, kickback and corruption schemes,” Chloe Sorvino, a journalist and author who writes about the food industry, told More Perfect Union.
JBS’s IPO makes a bad situation for small farms even worse, given that the U.S. meatpacking industry is already extremely concentrated. According to antitrust guidelines from the Department of Justice, if the top four players in an industry have 20-25% of the market share, it’s considered a highly consolidated industry.
Market concentration in the meatpacking industry dwarfs these numbers.
“In the beef industry, you have 80 to 85% with the top four. In pork you have more than 70% with the top four, and in chicken you have over 60% controlled by the top four, so that pretty much impacts every single worker at these plants, the farmers—any American that is buying meat is impacted by the consolidation,” Sorvino told More Perfect Union.
As a result, smaller operations are unable to develop alternative supply chains for the costly process of slaughtering their livestock. Those who aren’t forced out of the business altogether are left with few options other than to do business with the giants who control the industry.
“The biggest challenge in the production of livestock for meat is the slaughter piece,” independent rancher Mike Callicrate told More Perfect Union.
This is a problem Callicrate has been trying to bring attention to for decades.
“Because we only have three packers today really setting the price – and it’s really only one, the other two follow, in fact all the rest of them follow – we’ve decoupled supply and demand,” Callicrate said at a 1996 cattle conference in South Dakota.
Now, JBS will have more market dominance, and better access to more investors and capital, to fund their acquisitions. It’s more power for the packing companies, and less for the small farmers and ranchers who are already being pushed out of the market.
Watch our full report here:
Reporting by Ian McKenna, Claire Haughey, and Zach Ben-Amots. See below for a transcript of the video.
VOICEOVER: There is a force in our meat industry that you don’t even know about.
CHLOE SORVINO, Author of Raw Deal: This is the biggest story in food. This is the biggest story for anyone who eats.
FRANCE 24: Joesley and Wesley Batista . . .
BBC NEWS:. . . executives of JBS . . .
FRANCE 24: . . . bribing nearly 1900 politicians . . .
FRANCE 24:. . . under investigation for corruption . . .
VOICEOVER: The Brazilian meatpacker JBS has been steadily taking over America for years..
BLOOMBERG:The world’s largest meat producer, Brazil’s JBS . . .
VOICEOVER: This is a company that has been plagued with scandal.
MIKE CALLICRATE, independent rancher: Look at the recalls, look at the child labor. Look at the payoffs and settlements.
BLOOMBERG:. . . inspectors were bribed to clear tainted meat for export . . .
SORVINO:. . . price-fixing allegations, wage-fixing allegations, environmental desecration allegations, discrimination in their plants . . .
VOICEOVER:Despite all of that, the company just debuted on the New York Stock Exchange.
CALLICRATE: You are turning a criminal actor loose on American investors. This makes zero sense.
SORVINO: The government seems to have taken a step back from its regulatory authority. They’ve chosen cheap meat. Cheap meat wins over pretty much anything else in America.
VOICEOVER: But what is the real cost of cheap, corporate meat? And what could it mean for the food we depend on?
CARSON JORGENSEN, independent lamb rancher: The problem is right now, we have set this up for a major collapse.
VOICEOVER: The industry’s consolidation and predatory behavior from companies like JBS have made it increasingly difficult to build alternative food supply chains.
CALLICRATE: You’re standing in front of our Angus Wagyu cross calves. We had a couple thousand head in this feedlot. Well, for an independent rancher, this is a good size operation. But in comparison to the industry, it’s extremely small. The biggest feeders now are 100,000 head-plus operations.
VOICEOVER: Mike Callicrate is an independent rancher. In over 30 years of ranching, he’s seen just how much the industry has changed and gotten worse for small producers like him.
CALLICRATE: Out of this very facility I used to sell to 20 meatpackers at any given time, and that got down to zero. Why is it that US ranchers are going out of business? It’s for lack of market access.
VOICEOVER: Mike now operates Ranch Foods Direct, a vertically integrated meat business focuesd on local, ethical, and sustainable meat production.
CALLICRATE: As far as the number of folks in the US that do what we do at Ranch Foods Direct, which are basically pasture to plate, there’s hardly any.
VOICEOVER: PAsture to plate. That means Ranch Foods Direct raises the cattle, slaughters them, then processes and packages for direct sale. But that is not typical for most producers.
CALLICRATE: The biggest challenge in the production of livestock for meat is slaughter piece.
VOICEOVER: That slaughter piece—the ‘processing and packaging before meat reaches customers—is where just a few big meatpackers are able to set pricing and squeeze the ranchers selling them cattle. Because of consolidation in the industry, ranchers have basically no other options but to accept — a problem Mike has been speaking out on for 30 years.
(1996 South Dakota Governor's Cattle Conference) CALLICRATE: Because we only have three packers in the business today basically setting the price, we’ve decoupled supply and demand. We don’t have a high level of competition out there that will pay you a premium for your cattle.
VOICEOVER: Back then, the Brazilian meat processing giant JBS wasn’t even in the U.S. market. But now…
CALLICRATE: JBS is now our biggest meat company in the world and in the U.S. and they’re essentially a predator in the industry.
SORVINO: JBS is a particularly concerning company because there’s been a history of over a decade of different bribes, over 1,800 politicians in Brazil.
VOICEOVER: Chloe Sorvino reports on the food industry and the titans who run it — like the billionaire brothers behind JBS.
SORVINO: Joesely and Wesley Batista took over their family’s meatpacker in their 30s, and they set their sights on going abroad as big as possible and so they looked at the U.S. to acquire assets on the cheap, and they ended up using bribes, and a kickback-fueled corruption scheme to finance loans that helped them get some of the most iconic meatpacking assets. They’ve pled guilty to foreign corruption practices and have had to pay fines, they’ve even had some jail time in Brazil.
VOICEOVER: Chloe’s book, Raw Deal, traces the Batista brothers rise — and broader consolidation in America’s meat industry.
SORVINO: To take a step back, America’s antitrust regulations with the DOJ are created around this idea that the top four players in an industry, if those top four players have around 20 to 25% control together, that’s a highly, highly consolidated industry.
And, in the beef industry, you have 80 to 85% with the top four. In pork you have more than 70% controlled by the top four, and in chicken you have over 60% control by the top 4, so that pretty much impacts any American that is buying meat.
VOICEOVER: And JBS’ IPO could just make that all worse.
SORVINO: JBS trading means that it’s gonna have access to U.S. investors and pension funds and all of these funds that are pouring more money in. They will be able to finance better loans, they will be able to have more capital to do whatever they want with.
VOICEOVER: That means more money to fuel their acquisition spree—further consolidating the market, giving more power to the packing companies, and less to the farmers and ranchers whose livestock will eventually end up there.
SORVINO: For American food producers, it means that JBS is not going away anytime soon.
JORGENSEN: I think it is important to look at the sheep industry as the canary in the coal mine and I can tell you what will happen to the beef industry if we don’t take action now.
VOICEOVER: Carson Jorgensen is a sixth-generation lamb rancher in Utah. In 2001, his family was one of roughly 150 sheep ranching families that banded to leverage their power against the big meatpackers.
JORGENSON: I guess there’s not, you know, as many people now as there used to be with that connection and those roots. It just makes for a different dynamic.
VOICEOVER: In 2001, his family was one of roughly 150 sheep ranching families that banded to leverage their power against the big meatpackers.
JORGENSON: Mountain State Rosen co-op was a family-owned operation. Just prior to Covid, MSR was — it was having some difficulties.
VOICEOVER: In 2020, as restaurants shut down and production lines stalled across the country, Mountain States Rosen filed for bankruptcy.
JORGENSON: That being said, they had a buyer to come in and buy the plant. That was the plan, this Canadian company that was going to buy it and produce—you know, process American lamb and keep it here in the United States. That was the plan.
Well, JBS owns the plant across the street and JBS’s contract with MSR was for the wastewater management and for the steam that it takes to run the plant. JBS wouldn't transfer over the wastewater contract and the steam contract to the new buyers because ultimately they wanted that plant and they knew if they couldn't sell the plant, it would go defunct and they would end up with it. And that’s exactly what happened.
VOICEOVER: After JBS converted the plant into a beef facility, sheep ranchers across the West were left with very few options for regional processing.
JORGENSON: That was a really critical piece of infrastructure for us producers here in the western United States.
VOICEOVER: Many opted to go with Double J in Texas, a family-owned processing plant more than a thousand miles away for producers in Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. But Double J is now also at risk of closing, once again leaving ranchers with alarmingly few options for selling or processing their meat, and scrambling for solutions.
JORGENSON: It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion. It’s coming. You know the train’s about to hit that car, and everybody’s yelling and everybody’s screaming but there’s just a lot of people standing there watching it happen and there’s not much anybody’s doing about it.
AJ RICHARDS: JBS going public would be the final nail in the coffin.
VOICEOVER: AJ Richards is an entrepreneur promoting regional meat systems.
RICHARDS: Now, for us, it’s more of the mentality, it’s better to have and not need than to need and not have.
VOICEOVER: AJ has been very vocal with his concerns about what JBS going public could mean for ranchers—and for our food supply.
[RICHARDS — INSTAGRAM LIVE VIDEO]: Mr. President, I love you, I appreciate you. It is our job as citizens to hold you accountable. And whoever you’ve got in your circle, they ain’t speaking truth because you’re about to put us in a whole world of hurt.
VOICEOVER: As the big meat processing plants have grown larger, more efficient, and gained greater control over pricing, it’s become increasingly difficult for any alternative supply chain—like AJ's—to compete.
RICHARDS: We can’t lose one more farm and ranch, and in fact, stopping hte loss isn’t what we have to do. We have to make a path so that more people can get into farming.
RESIDENT: Most of the people I grew up with there, they’ve gone bankrupt. Their family farms are no— they’re not family farms anymore, which is sad.
VOICEOVER: JBS has been trying to go public for years now, but the company’s alarming track record has prompted bipartisan efforts to block them from accessing U.S. capital markets—including a 2024 letter to the SEC, signed by Cory Booker, Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley and more.
RICHARDS: You know, monitoring, watching this JBS IPO for the last couple of years, I was happy to keep seeing it get shut down.
VOICEOVER: But this April the SEC finally greenlit their listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
SORVINO: JBS got the green light only a few weeks after they did give this big donation to the Trump administration.
RICHARDS: And so, big surprise. A few months later, now the people that donated $5 million are going public and nobody’s standing in their way?
SORVINO: Is a donation like that a quid pro quo? I'm not sure I can be the judge of that, but what I can say is this: this is clearly a company and two billionaire top shareholders who have pled guilty and have a clear history of bribery, kickback and corruption schemes.
VOICEOVER: Regardless of how they got there, JBS is now trading on the NYSE—and that could spell danger for our food supply.
SORVINO: Meatpackers say that they have these massive plants so that they can have cheap meat made as at most efficiently as possible...But at the end of the day, they're also creating this kind of underlying vulnerability because it's super fragile. I mean, if one plant goes out, one feedlot goes out, or a few of them go out because of a hurricane or extreme weather or, you know a pandemic — this is a system that has no life preservers.
CALLICRATE: So anyways our carcasses come down and they go into the cut room here.
VOICEOVER: The industry’s consolidation and predatory behavior from companies like JBS have made it increasingly difficult to build alternative food supply chains.
CALLICRATE:
CALLICRATE: “This is the place that the real investment occurs as far as meat processing. This is a vacuum-packaging machine with a labeler: $135,000. The room is just full of this kind of equipment. And this is why not everyone can do what we do here in processing. It’s really expensive to get into.
VOICEOVER: Even Mike’s Ranch Foods Direct operation is only possible due to the financial success of another business ventures.
CALLICRATE: We’ve got to absolutely control the predators in the market, and only the government is big enough to do that—of antitrust and breaking up concentrated power and wealth, which has always been the greatest threat to any free society. That’s simply not happening.
SORVINO: JBS has skirted American watchdogs and the scrutiny of policymakers for years now.
VOICEOVER: But . . . it’s not just that nobody will stand up to them.
SORVINO: They're propping JBS up with millions of dollars in contracts every year. That’s meat that’s going to public schools, soldiers around the world, nursing homes that are publicly funded, hospitals. And they’ve chosen cheap meat. Cheap meat wins over pretty much anything else in America.
VOICEOVER: But meat this cheap comes at a cost.
JORGENSEN: At some point we have to look at it and say, “Somebody’s trying to break this.” And at the end of the day, it’s just about money. It’s about the bottom line.