Who is JBS? The ambitious Brazilian group that became the world's largest producer of animal proteins

José Batista Sobrinho was just over thirty years old when, in 1953, he opened a small slaughterhouse in Anápolis, in the interior of the Brazilian state of Goiás. It was a modest plant, intended to supply a regional market, in a Brazil still far from imagining itself as a global agro-industrial power. However, that family business was the starting point of one of the most impactful, and also most controversial, stories in the animal protein business. Decades later, under the leadership of his sons Joesley and Wesley Batista, that slaughterhouse transformed into JBS, the largest global group of animal-derived food, with a scale that spans continents, markets, and entire production chains. The growth of JBS always responded to a clear logic: gaining industrial scale, diversifying proteins, and expanding geographically to cushion the ups and downs inherent in the livestock business. After consolidating itself in Brazil as one of the main actors in the meat market, the turning point ...