In December 2021, six major European supermarket chains decided to halt the sale of Brazilian beef giant JBS products indefinitely. The boycott was announced after a report by the nonprofit media outlet Repórter Brasil, in partnership with the global NGO Mighty Earth, which directly linked JBS goods sold in Europe to deforestation in Brazil’s most threatened ecosystems, including the Amazon Rainforest. The journalistic investigation revealed that the meatpacking company had bought cattle raised in illegally deforested areas by indirect suppliers in a scheme known as “cattle laundering.” On April 29, Marcel Gomes, the executive secretary at Repórter Brasil, won the 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize for leading this investigative effort. “It’s a pleasure to receive the award for a journalistic effort and to see this field of knowledge valued,” Gomes told Mongabay by phone. “This investigative work required a lot of planning and dedication, years of defining strategies and implementation.” Other five Goldman awards were announced on Apr. 29: Alok Shukla from India, Andrea Vidaurre from the U.S., Murrawah Maroochy Johnson from Australia, Teresa Vicente from Spain, and Nonhle Mbuthuma and Sinegugu Zukulu from South Africa. Gomes’ award-winning work began in 2017, with the construction of its own platform to cross-reference large masses of data on the beef chain — environmental fines, embargoes, slave labor and inter-ranch cattle transport guides provided by public agencies under Brazil’s transparency law. Gomes said that Repórter Brasil’s tool helps connect Brazil’s ranching to social and environmental issues. “We built a platform full of information from…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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