Mighty Earth responds to New York Attorney General’s $1.1 million settlement with JBS USA for greenwashing
The New York Attorney General Letitia James has agreed a $1.1million settlement with meat giant JBS USA for allegedly misleading the public for its commitment to reducing its carbon footprint. JBS USA also agreed to reform its environmental marketing practices and report annually to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) for three years.
The settlement comes a week after Mighty Earth sued JBS USA in Washington, D.C., in a similar ongoing case for alleged false and misleading statements that JBS will be net zero by 2040. JBS is the world’s largest meat company, with climate emissions estimated greater than Spain’s.
Alex Wijeratna, Mighty Earth’s Senior director for investigations and law, said:
“It’s highly significant that the New York Attorney General Leticia James has settled the state’s greenwashing lawsuit with JBS USA for over $1 million and secured agreement for JBS to remove its misleading climate claims in New York. We now need JBS to go all the way and drop all its false and misleading net zero climate claims across its entire global portfolio.”
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Notes to editors:
- The New York Attorney General sued JBS USA in 2024 at the Supreme Court of New York after they revealed it was advertising that the JBS group would reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, despite having no plan to actually achieve it.
- The OAG found that when JBS USA announced its “Net Zero by 2040” commitment, the JBS Group had not yet calculated the company’s total greenhouse gas emissions, nor had it developed a plan to execute the commitment or determined whether it was economically or technologically feasible. Despite this, JBS USA publicly represented that its commitment was achievable and that it had a plan to meet its target.
- Under the settlement with the Office of the Attorney General, JBS USA will:
- Pay $1.1 million to support ‘climate-smart’ agricultural programmes that help New York farmers adopt best practises to reduce emissions, increase resiliency, and enhance productivity. Funding priority will go towards New York farms that lost federal funding to supply food to food banks.
- The NYAG says these climate-smart programmes should focus on supporting NY farmers to drive down on-farm emissions, demonstrated by credible and measurable data.
- Reform its environmental marketing practices and report annually to the OAG for three years, which JBS agreed to.
- Immediately stop making deceptive or unsubstantiated environmental claims and placing JBS USA under OAG monitoring for three years. As part of this monitoring, JBS USA must submit annual compliance reports to OAG, verifying adherence to the agreement.
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