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[Narrator]
There is a force in our meat industry that you don't even know about.
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This is the biggest story in food.
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[Reporter]
Joesley and Wesley Batista . . .
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. . . executives of JBS . . .
. . . are already under investigation for corruption . . .
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This is the biggest story
for anyone who eats.
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[Narrator]
The Brazilian meatpacker, JBS,
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has been steadily taking over
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the American meat industry for years.
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[Reporter]
The world’s largest meat producer, Brazil's JBS . . .
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[Narrator]
This is a company that has been plagued with scandal . . .
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Look at all of the recalls.
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Look at the child labor.
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Look at the payoffs and settlements.
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[Reporter]
. . . investigating whether Brazilian inspectors
were bribed to clear tainted meat
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for export.
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[Chloe Sorvino]
Price-fixing allegations, wage-fixing allegations,
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environmental desecration allegations,
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discrimination in their plants.
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[Narrator]
Despite all of that,
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the company just debuted on the New York Stock Exchange.
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[Mike Callicrate]
You are turning a criminal actor loose
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on American investors.
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This makes zero sense.
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The government seems to have taken
a step back from its regulatory authority.
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They've chosen cheap meat.
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Cheap meat wins over
pretty much anything else in America.
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[Narrator]
But what is the real cost of cheap, corporate meat?
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And what could it mean for the food we depend on?
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[Carson Jorgensen]
The problem is, right now, we have set this up for a major collapse.
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[Mike Callicrate]
You're standing in front of our Angus Wagyu cross calves.
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We have a couple thousand head
in this feedlot.
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Well, for an independent rancher,
this is a good size operation.
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But in comparison to the industry,
it's extremely small.
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The biggest feeders now are 100,000 head-plus operations.
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[Narrator]
Mike Callicrate is an independent rancher.
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In over 30 years of ranching,
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he's seen just how much the industry has changed and gotten worse
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for small producers like him.
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[Mike]
Out of this very facility, I used to sell t0 20 meatpackers
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at any given time, and that got down to zero.
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Why is it that U.S. ranchers are going out of business?
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It's for lack of market access.
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[Narrator]
Mike now operates Ranch Foods Direct,
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a vertically-integrated meat business focused on local,
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ethical and sustainable meat production.
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[Mike]
As far as the number of folks in the
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U.S. that do what we do
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at Ranch Foods Direct, which are basically pasture to plate,
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there's hardly any.
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[Narrator]
Pasture to plate.
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That means Ranch Foods Direct raises the cattle,
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slaughters them,
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then processes and packages
for direct sale.
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But that is not typical
for most producers.
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[Mike]
The biggest challenge in the production of livestock,
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if you're going to be selling meat,
is that slaughter piece.
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[Narrator]
That slaughter piece,
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the processing and packaging that happens
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before meat reaches customers,
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is where just a few big meatpackers
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are able to set pricing and squeeze
the ranchers selling them cattle.
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Because of consolidation in the industry,
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ranchers have basically no other option but to accept—
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a problem Mike has been speaking out on for 30 years.
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[Mike]
Because we only have three packers in the business today
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basically setting the price,
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we've decoupled supply and demand.
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So you don't have a high level
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of competition out there that will pay you
a premium for your cattle.
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[Narrator]
Back then, the Brazilian meat processing giant JBS
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wasn't even in the U.S. market. But now . . .
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[Mike]
JBS is our biggest meat company in the world,
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and they're essentially a predator in the industry.
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[Chloe Sorvino]
JBS is a particularly concerning company
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because there's been a history of over
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a decade of different bribes,
over 1,800 politicians in Brazil.
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[Narrator]
Chloe Sorvino reports on the food industry and the titans who run it,
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like the billionaire brothers behind JBS.
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[Chloe]
Joesley and Wesley Batista took over their family’s
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meatpacker in their 30s,
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and they set their sights on going abroad
and going abroad as big as possible.
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And so they looked at the U.S. to acquire assets on the cheap,
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and they ended up using bribes
and a kickback-fueled
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corruption scheme to finance loans
that helped them get some of the most
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iconic American meatpacking assets.
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They've pled guilty to foreign
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corruption practices and had to pay fines,
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have even had some jail time in Brazil.
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[Narrator]
Chloe’s book, “Raw Deal,” traces the Batista brothers’
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rise and broader
consolidation in America's meat industry.
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[Chloe]
To take a step back, America's
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antitrust regulations with
the DOJ are created around this idea
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that the top four players in an industry,
if those top four players
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have around 20 to 25% control together,
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that's a highly consolidated industry.
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And in the beef industry,
you have 80 to 85% with the top four,
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in pork, you have more than 70% controlled by the top four,
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and in chicken you have over 60% controlled
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by the top four.
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So that pretty much impacts
any American that is buying meat.
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[Narrator]
And JBS’ IPO could just make all of that
worse.
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[Chloe]
JBS trading means that it's gonna have access to U.S.
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investors and pension funds
and all of these funds
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that are pouring more money in, and
they will be able to finance better loans.
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They will be able to have more capital
to do whatever they want with.
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[Narrator]
That means more money to fuel their acquisition spree,
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further consolidating the market, giving more power to the packing companies
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and less to the farmers and ranchers whose
livestock will eventually end up there.
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[Chloe]
For American food producers, it means that
JBS is not going away anytime soon.
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[Carson Jorgensen]
I think it is important to look at the sheep industry
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as the canary in the coal mine,
and I can tell you
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what will happen to the beef industry
if we don't take action now.
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[Narrator]
Carson Jorgensen is a sixth-generation
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lamb rancher in Utah.
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[Carson]
This was it.
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I guess there's not,
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you know, as many people now as there used to be
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with that connection and those roots.
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It just makes for a different dynamic.
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[Narrator]
In 2001, Carson's family joined roughly 150
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sheep ranching families that banded together to
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leverage their own power against the big meatpackers.
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[Carson]
Mountain States Rosen Co-Op was a family-owned operation.
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Just prior to COVID,
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MSR was having some difficulties.
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[Narrator]
In 2020, as restaurants shut down and production lines
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stalled across the country,
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Mountain States Rosen filed for bankruptcy.
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[Carson]
That being said,
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they had a buyer to come in and buy the plant.
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That was the plan.
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There was a Canadian company
that was gonna come in
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and buy it and process American lamb
and keep it here in the United States.
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And that was the plan.
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Well,
JBS owns the plant across the street,
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and JBS’ contract with MSR
was for the wastewater management
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and for the steam that it takes
to run the plant.
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JBS wouldn't transfer over the wastewater
contract and the steam contract
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to the new buyers,
because ultimately they wanted that plant,
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and they knew if they couldn't
sell the plant,
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it would go defunct,
and they would end up with it.
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And that's exactly what happened.
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[Narrator]
After JBS converted the plant into a beef facility,
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sheep ranchers across the West were left
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with very few options
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for regional processing.
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[Carson]
That was really critical piece of infrastructure
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for us producers here in the western United States.
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[Narrator]
Many opted to go to Double J in Texas,
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a family-owned processing plant more than a thousand miles
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away for producers in Utah, Wyoming and Idaho.
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But Double J is now also at risk of closing,
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once again leaving ranchers with alarmingly few options for selling
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or processing their meat,
and scrambling for solutions.
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[Carson]
It's like watching a car crash in slow motion.
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It's coming.
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You know
the train's about to hit that car,
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and everybody's yelling
and everybody's screaming.
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But there's just a lot of people sitting there
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watching it happen, and there's not much anybody's doing about it.
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[AJ Richards]
JBS going public would be the final nail in the coffin.
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[Narrator]
AJ Richards is an entrepreneur promoting regional meat systems.
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[AJ]
Now, for us, it's more of the mentality: It's better to have and not need than to need and not have.
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it's better to have
and not need than to need and not have.
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[Narrator]
AJ has been vocal with his concerns about what JBS going
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public could mean for ranchers
and for our food supply.
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[AJ]
Mr. President, I love you, I appreciate you.
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It is our job as citizens
to hold you accountable.
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And whoever you've got in your circle,
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they ain't speaking truth because you're
about to put us in a whole world of hurt.
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[Narrator]
As the big meat processing plants have grown larger and
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gained greater control over pricing,
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it's become increasingly difficult for any
alternative supply chain to compete.
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[AJ]
We can't lose one more farm and ranch,
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and, in fact, stopping the loss
isn't what we have to do.
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We have to make a path
so that more people can get into farming.
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Most of the people I grew up with there,
they've gone bankrupt.
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Their family farms are no—they're not family farms anymore,
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which is sad.
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[Narrator]
JBS has been trying to go public for years now,
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but the company’s alarming track record has prompted
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bipartisan efforts to block them from accessing U.S.
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capital markets,
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including a 2024 letter to the SEC
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signed by Cory Booker, Marco Rubio,
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Josh Hawley and more.
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[AJ]
Monitoring and watching this whole JBS IPO
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for the last couple of years,
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I was happy to keep seeing it
get shut down.
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[Narrator]
But this April, the SEC
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finally greenlit their listing
on the New York Stock Exchange.
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[Chloe]
JBS got the green light only a few weeks after they did
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give this big donation
to the Trump administration.
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[AJ]
And so, oh, big surprise.
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A few months later, now the people that donated
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$5 million are going public,
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and nobody's standing in their way.
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[Chloe]
Is a donation like that a quid pro quo?
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I'm not sure I can be the judge of that.
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But what I can say is
this is clearly a company
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and two billionaire
top shareholders who have pled guilty
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and have a clear history of bribery,
kickbacks and corruption schemes.
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[Narrator]
Regardless of how they got there,
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JBS is now a publicly traded company,
and that could spell danger
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for our food supply.
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[Chloe]
Meatpackers say that they have these massive plants
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so that they can have cheap
meat made as most efficiently as possible.
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But at the end of the day,
they're also creating
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this kind of underlying vulnerability
because it's super fragile.
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I mean, if one plant goes out, one feedlot
goes out, or a few of them go out
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because of a hurricane or extreme
weather or, you know, a pandemic—
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this is a system
that has no life preservers.
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[Mike]
So anyway, our carcasses come down, and
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they go into the cut room here.
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[Narrator]
The industry's consolidation and predatory behavior from
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companies like JBS have made it increasingly difficult
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to build alternative food supply chains.
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[Mike]
This is the place that the real investment occurs
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as far as meat processing.
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This is a vacuum packaging machine
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with a labeler.
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$135,000.
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The room is just full of this
kind of equipment,
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and this is why not everyone can do
what we do here in processing.
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It's really expensive to get into.
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[Narrator]
Even Mike's Ranch Foods Direct operation is only possible
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due to the financial success of another
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of Mike's business ventures.
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[Mike]
We've got to absolutely control the predators in the market,
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and only government is big enough
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to do that—of antitrust and breaking up
concentrated power and wealth,
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which has always been considered
the greatest threat to any free society.
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That's simply not happening.
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JBS has skirted American watchdogs
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and the scrutiny of policymakers for years now.
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[Narrator]
But it's not just that nobody will stand up to them.
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[Chloe]
[The government is] propping JBS up with millions of dollars
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in contracts every year.
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That’s meat that's going to public schools,
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soldiers around the world,
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nursing homes that are publicly funded,
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hospitals.
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And they've chosen cheap meat.
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Cheap meat wins over
pretty much anything else in America.
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[Narrator]
But meat this cheap comes at a cost.
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[Carson]
At some point, we have to look at it and say,
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somebody is trying to break this.
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And at the end of the day, it's
just about money.
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It's about the bottom line.
