Who We Are

Our Approach

In 2015, we performed an extensive Corporate Materiality Analysis (CMA) that identified the material issues for our business. This analysis, while inclusive of JBS USA’s internal perception of the company’s sustainability performance, relied heavily on the views and perceptions of outside stakeholders, including Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), community organizations, key customers, suppliers, financial institutions, government officials, academia, industry trade associations and other industry stakeholders. The material issues identified through this consultation process defines our key priority areas, five-year goals and reported annual performance.

In 2020, we hired external consultants to revisit our CMA in order to understand how the expectations of our key stakeholders may have shifted due to events such as COVID-19 and groundswells of support against racial injustice. Through surveys and in-depth interviews, stakeholders from around the world and across our supply chain provided insights that confirmed our efforts in key areas. The stakeholder feedback provided helps guide our current strategy and informed our goals for 2030 and beyond.

Additionally, the JBS USA Ethics Line is used for employee consultation and we also continuously gather feedback around our material issues from internal and external stakeholders through one-on-one conversations with customers, consumers, team members, subject matter experts, external stakeholders and involvement in cross-collaborative supply chain sustainability initiatives. This feedback helps inform our process. Progress to goals and annual performance are summarized and annually reported by our Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) to the Independent Advisory Board for additional feedback and guidance. Stakeholders are also involved in the development of this report.

To fully integrate our key priority areas, as identified by our CMA, across JBS USA business units, we defined and benchmarked approximately 30 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on performance data for 2013, 2014 and 2015, across more than 60 facilities in the U.S. and Canada. Each facility was then tasked with identifying data-informed 2020 improvement goals and an implementation plan by which to achieve these goals. Based on the cumulative facility improvement goals, each JBS USA business unit developed reduction targets that were agreed to by the executive team, including the CEO and business unit Presidents, and then aggregated to form aggressive JBS USA 2020 improvement goals.

Building our sustainability goals from the ground up ensures ownership at the facility level, oversight at the business unit level and consistency in approach across the JBS USA enterprise. We are confident that developing a program that is supported by team members from the front-line to executive leadership will result in meaningful and measurable change that will drive continuous improvement throughout our company, meet our stakeholders’ expectations and allow us to create the greatest societal benefit.

Given the scale and diversity of our operations and the unique supply chain challenges faced by each of our business units, JBS USA’s initial approach to sustainability was regionally focused. We are now excited to announce our globally aligned 2030 improvement goals.