"Brazilian meat firm’s A- sustainability rating has campaigners up in arms", 30 March 2023

...Brazilian meat company JBS has previously been linked to deforestation in the Amazon, where its slaughterhouses process beef from ranches carved out of the Amazon, Cerrado and other biomes. But in the latest Climate Change Report by the influential rating organisation CDP, the multinational got a grade of A- for its efforts to tackle climate change – up from B in the previous assessment – and was given a “leadership” status award.

The high score, which was based on self-reporting by JBS, has provoked incredulity. Twenty civil society groups are now calling on the London-based CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) to strip JBS of its A-minus score amid accusations of greenwashing and misleading investors, supermarkets and consumers...

When the Guardian asked CDP why it had given JBS such a positive evaluation, a spokesperson said the ratings group was now carrying out an internal review of the JBS score and the impact on its methodology. The transparency charity is also considering changes so there is more reliance on public evidence and less reliance on voluntary disclosure. “We recognise that A- is too high a score for a non-public response, so we will change our classification criteria to reflect this in future.”

JBS said deforestation was not included in its last report because guidance on calculating targets for land-use change was only released by the Science Based Targets initiative last year but would be incorporated in the future. It said all emissions calculations were independently verified according to accounting standards set by the greenhouse gas protocol. Despite its high emissions, reluctance to provide scope 3 data and dealings with illegal deforesters, the company promised it would improve in the future: “Our CDP disclosure is a mark of our commitment to transparency as we continue to advance sustainability actions on our journey to net zero by 2040. This includes leading industry efforts to zero deforestation in the Amazon by 2025”...