On 21 April 2022, the three organisations DeSmog, IATP and Feedback (authors) released a media briefing about their research finding of a purported 51% increase of GHG emissions by Brazilian food company JBS between the years 2016 and 2021. The media briefing was timed to be released on the day before JBS’ annual general meeting on 22 April. Global Food and Agribusiness Network (GFAN) found this finding to be implausible and therefore investigated the published calculations and methods of the authors.
GFAN found that most of the author’s findings are false. Contrary to their pronouncement, the authors did NOT calculate JBS-specific GHG emissions, neither in 2021, nor in 2016. Furthermore, the assumptions the authors made for calculating 2021 emissions are unrealistic and exaggerated. Therefore, the additional claim that JBS alone would have higher emissions than Italy is also false. Finally, the authors claim that they calculated the emissions with the same methodology in 2016 and in 2021. This claim is also false. On the contrary, the purported rise of 51% is mostly a statistical artefact resulting from a change of methodology in assessing 2016 and 2021 emissions. If the authors had used the same methodology in 2021 as in 2016, they would have found a decrease in emissions.