“Brazil judge orders government to add JBS subsidiary to 'dirty list' for slavery”, 3 December 2025

A federal labor judge in Brazil ordered the government to add a poultry unit of meatpacker JBS to a so-called "dirty list" of employers responsible for subjecting workers to slavery-like conditions, according to a Tuesday court ruling seen by Reuters.

The case stems from a federal raid last year that found 10 people working in slavery-like conditions for a contractor hired to load and unload cargo for poultry unit JBS Aves, in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state…

Inspectors found that workers at the unit were subjected to illegally long shifts for as long as 16 hours and housed without access to clean drinking water, according to a report seen by Reuters. The contractor had also made unlawful deductions from workers' wages, making it harder for them to quit, the report found.

The ruling in a lawsuit by labor prosecutors against the government comes after Brazil's government Labor Minister Luiz Marinho initially stopped JBS from being added to the list by carrying out an unusual final review of the investigation that led to the charges…

The Labor Ministry will appeal the decision as soon as formally notified, it said in a statement.

JBS suspended the contractor, terminated the contract and blocked the company upon learning of the allegations, the company told Reuters on Wednesday…

In her decision, Judge Katarina Roberta Mousinho de Matos ruled Marinho's decision was unlawful, and not based on legal considerations, but rather on the economic repercussions that adding the firm to the list could have…