(New York, October 9, 2025) – Cattle ranchers exploiting forced labor and invading indigenous lands are fueling the destruction of Brazil’s forests while profiting from an industry-wide failure to establish transparent and sustainable supply chains, Climate Rights International said in a report and accompanying video released today. The Lula administration has decreased deforestation but has not taken crucial steps available to it to strengthen traceability within the cattle sector.

The 135-page report, “Before It’s Too Late: Curbing Cattle-Driven Deforestation and Rights Abuses in Brazil,” found that major global fashion and footwear brands are linked through their leather supply chains to Brazilian producers implicated in egregious environmental and human rights harms. The current lack of full traceability within the cattle sector means that Brazilian leather and beef—with limited exceptions—cannot be reliably considered free of illegal deforestation or rights abuses.

“Brazil has developed powerful data tools that—if properly integrated—could go a long way toward ridding its cattle sector of deforestation and the forced labor that enables it,” said Daniel Wilkinson, senior policy advisor at Climate Rights International. “The Lula administration and industry leaders now face a choice: use these tools to make supply chains transparent and sustainable, or allow illegal practices to keep pushing the country toward ecological disaster.”

While deforestation rates have decreased in Brazil under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, they remain dangerously high, driven largely by land-clearing for cattle pasture. Scientists warn that the Amazon rainforest is headed toward a “tipping point” where vast areas could dry out, releasing massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, with potentially catastrophic consequences for global efforts to contain climate change.

Forced Labor

Ranchers clearing Brazil’s forests frequently subject their employees to forced labor and other forms of severe labor exploitation. “When illegal deforestation is found, we generally also find workers in conditions analogous to slavery,” a federal labor prosecutor told Climate Rights International.

In one case documented in the report, labor inspectors rescued five workers—including a 15-year-old boy—from a farm more than 200 kilometers from the nearest town. The workers had no way to communicate with the outside world and no ability to leave.  A worker rescued from another farm told Climate Rights International how workers had gone unpaid, worked excessively long hours, slept under a tarp, and drank water they believed to be polluted, enduring this mistreatment in silence out of fear of the owners who they believed were “dangerous people.”

Indigenous Land Invasions

Cattle-driven deforestation often entails invasions of Indigenous territories by ranchers seeking to use their lands to graze cattle. Two cases documented in the report involve ranchers illegally raising cattle in the Krikati Indigenous Territory in Maranhão state. Since 2017, invaders have cleared more than 13 square kilometers within the Territory for pastures and settlements, cutting the community off from traditional fishing and hunting grounds. Community members told Climate Rights International that they’re afraid to move through their ancestral lands due to repeated threats and acts of intimidation. “We used to live from fishing and hunting,” Chief Maurício Krikati said. “Today, when we go to hunt, there’s only cattle, cattle raising, pasture.” 

Contamination Risk in Global Supply Chains

An investigation undertaken with Repórter Brasil documented ten recent cases in which cattle ranches implicated in deforestation, labor abuses, and/or invasions of Indigenous territories entered the supply chains of major Brazilian meatpackers. Some of these ranchers sold cattle directly to the slaughterhouses, while most were indirect suppliers, transferring cattle to intermediary farms that then sold to the slaughterhouses. These slaughterhouses, in turn, supply tanneries operated by Durlicouros, JBS, Marfrig, Mastrotto, Minerva, or Viposa.

An investigation by Stand.earth Research Group on behalf of Climate Rights International found 24 international brands linked through their 2023 and 2024 supply chains to tanneries operated by one or more of these six companies. They include athletic footwear and apparel brands such as Adidas, Asics, Converse, New Balance, Nike, Puma, Reebok, Rockport, The North Face, and Vans, as well as fashion and apparel brands including Calvin Klein, Clarks, Coach, ECCO, H&M, Hugo Boss, Kate Spade, Kompanero, Lacoste, M&S, Michael Kors, Ted Baker, Timberland, and Tommy Hilfiger. (These links can be seen here.)

A review by Climate Rights International of more than 40 publications by civil society organizations and journalists found more than 340 reported cases connecting the supply chains of major Brazilian exporters of beef and leather to cattle producers implicated in illegal deforestation and/or human rights abuses.

Empty Promises by Companies

Brazil has developed data tools that make it possible to monitor whether individual farms are complying with key laws protecting the environment, workers, and Indigenous communities. It has also developed a tool, the Animal Transit Guide (GTA), which tracks cattle movements for sanitary purposes. What the country still lacks, however, is a mechanism that integrates these tools in a manner—and at a scale—needed to determine whether supply chains are free of non-compliant farms. 

While some meatpackers and tanneries have improved oversight of their direct suppliers, tens of thousands of indirect suppliers remain unmonitored. Several companies have announced plans to develop new tracing systems to address this gap, but these will depend on the voluntary sharing of GTA data by suppliers at every level—something that cattle experts consulted by Climate Rights International consider highly unlikely.

“There’s no question Brazilian meatpackers can and must do a better job monitoring their supply chains with the tools they already have,” Wilkinson said. “But more importantly, they should work with the government to create the essential tool they still lack—a mechanism that can actually trace and monitor the entire cattle sector.”

The Way Forward: A National Traceability and Monitoring Mechanism

Several Brazilian states have recently developed traceability and monitoring mechanisms. Yet without a national system, these efforts risk segmenting the cattle sector, with cleaner supply chains emerging in some states to sell to markets that demand deforestation-free products, while deforestation and related abuses continue unchecked in other states that sell to markets that impose no conditions.

The federal government is the only entity with access to all the data needed for effective traceability at a national scale. By combining the GTA system with existing compliance-monitoring databases, the Lula administration could create a mechanism to track cattle movements and identify non-compliant farms throughout the country. According to Brazilian officials and experts, such a mechanism could be implemented within months and provide a game-changing tool for curbing deforestation and rights abuses across the cattle sector.

Among the main beneficiaries of sector-wide traceability and monitoring would be the majority of law-abiding cattle ranchers who face unfair competition from others who engage in environmental crimes and human rights abuses, lowering their own costs while increasing the regulatory and market risks for the entire sector. Moreover, the destruction of Brazil’s forests by non-compliant producers is hastening ecological impacts that could have catastrophic consequences for law-abiding ranchers, as well as the broader population of Brazil, the region, and the world. 

A national traceability and monitoring mechanism will also help Brazilian exports comply with existing and emerging regulations in key markets—including the United States, where Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 prohibits the import of goods made with forced labor, and the European Union, where the forthcoming Forced Labour Regulation and Deforestation Regulation will restrict products linked to forced labor and deforestation. Without major improvements in traceability and monitoring across Brazil’s cattle sector, it will be difficult for its exports to meet these requirements.

“Ethical sourcing requirements in the EU, the United States, and elsewhere should serve to incentivize more rigorous due diligence that benefits law-abiding producers in Brazil,” Wilkinson said. “But it’s critical that the US, in particular, apply its law in a fair and principled manner and not as a pretext for imposing politically motivated and punitive trade policies or tariffs.”

Role for Global Fashion and Footwear Brands

Roughly 80 percent of Brazilian leather is exported, with much of it reaching international fashion and footwear brands that have far greater public visibility and consumer risk than other companies linked to cattle supply chains. Given their high profile, these companies are in a unique position to press Brazilian exporters for more rigorous due diligence and mobilize support for Brazilian efforts to strengthen supply chain traceability.

“Global fashion and footwear brands should use their unmatched public influence to support the creation of a national traceability and monitoring mechanism in Brazil,” Wilkinson said. “Attempting only to clean up their own supply chains will not avert the larger crisis facing Brazil and the world.”