By Fabio Teixeira, Manuela Andreoni and Allison Lampert
XINGUARA (Reuters) -A Texas refinery that provides inexperienced gasoline to U.S. airways has been buying animal fats from cattle raised on illegally cleared lands within the Amazon rainforest, in response to a Reuters assessment of presidency monitoring information, interviews and eyewitness accounts.
Louisiana-based Diamond Inexperienced Diesel, a joint-venture between biofuels producer Darling Substances and petroleum refiner Valero Power, has invested tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} right into a refinery in Port Arthur, Texas that turns cattle fats – referred to as tallow – right into a cleaner different to petroleum-based jet gasoline and diesel.
Diamond Inexperienced Diesel is a serious participant within the U.S. sustainable fuels market. It has collected over $3 billion in U.S. tax credit for producing biofuels since 2022, in response to filings.
However interviews and paperwork present at the very least two Brazilian factories that equipped Diamond Inexperienced Diesel with tens of hundreds of tons of cattle fats since 2023 are sourcing a few of it from slaughterhouses which have purchased animals from illegally deforested ranches within the Amazon rainforest.
Carriers corresponding to JetBlue and Southwest Airways, which struck offers with Valero to make use of the “inexperienced” jet gasoline, can declare credit score for reducing their emissions as a result of Diamond Inexperienced Diesel’s plant is licensed underneath a United Nations settlement curbing the impression of aviation on the local weather referred to as CORSIA.
The worldwide marketplace for sustainable jet gasoline is small, about $2.9 billion in 2025 in response to evaluation agency SkyQuest Know-how Group, in comparison with the $239 billion world marketplace for typical aviation gasoline. However authorities incentives are anticipated to assist the market develop exponentially, pumping extra sources into the Brazilian cattle business, the main driver of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
Pedro Piris-Cabezas, an economist on the nonprofit Environmental Protection Fund, mentioned any extra demand “might outcome within the enlargement of herds and immediately or not directly drive deforestation and forest degradation.”
It might additionally violate Brazilian regulation. “Corporations that revenue from uncooked supplies originating from a provide chain that includes deforestation, are additionally answerable for these illegalities,” mentioned Ricardo Negrini, a Brazilian federal prosecutor who has opened a variety of authorities investigations into the cattle business.
Diamond Inexperienced Diesel, Darling Substances, Valero Power, Southwest and JetBlue didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark, together with detailed questions in regards to the Brazilian tallow provide chain.
To trace the tallow commerce from illegally deforested ranches within the Amazon to Diamond Inexperienced Diesel, Reuters partnered with the nonprofit investigative outlet Reporter Brasil, which helped assessment court docket paperwork that hyperlink slaughterhouses to the tallow vegetation, company filings, commerce information, and authorities cattle monitoring data.
Reuters additionally interviewed over a dozen individuals concerned in every step of the meat tallow provide chain, together with merchants, truck drivers, prosecutors, auditors and regulators.
Diamond Inexperienced Diesel sources tallow from a number of nations, and Reuters was unable to find out how a lot of it got here from ranches in illegally-cleared land within the Amazon.
TAINTED CATTLE
In 2022 Darling Substances CEO Randall Stuewe introduced the $557 million acquisition of a number of vegetation in Brazil, together with 4 within the Amazon area, that might provide “waste fat for use within the manufacturing of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation gasoline,” in response to a press release issued on the time.
Reuters discovered a type of rendering vegetation in Para state, referred to as Araguaia, sourced cattle fats from at the very least 5 meatpackers that failed a Could 2025 audit performed by federal prosecutors for slaughtering 20,000 cattle from illegally deforested areas.
In 2023, Araguaia exported $4.4 million value of beef tallow from the Amazon to Diamond Inexperienced Diesel, in response to commerce information from Import Genius.
In June, a Reuters journalist noticed a truck with an Araguaia emblem contained in the Sao Francisco slaughterhouse, which failed an audit for getting cattle from farms on illegally deforested land.
The driving force of the truck, who spoke on situation of anonymity, advised Reuters he had been choosing up carcasses on the Sao Francisco slaughterhouse and delivering them to the Araguaia plant for 2 years. Two different drivers and two Sao Francisco workers confirmed the slaughterhouse was an Araguaia provider.
Sao Francisco did not verify or deny that it’s a provider of the Araguaia plant. It mentioned it has been cooperating with federal prosecutors since 2018 and that it employed an outdoor agency to observe its provide chain.
Sao Francisco sources a few of its cattle not directly from Vale do Paraiso, a farm that had been blocked from grazing cattle since 2006 as a result of 15 sq. miles of timber had been illegally razed, in response to Brazil’s environmental safety company, Ibama. Cattle monitoring information reveals that the cattle was moved from Vale do Paraiso to a farm with a clear file earlier than it reached the slaughterhouse.
The company unblocked Vale do Paraiso final yr as a result of a court docket decided that the statute of limitations had expired, however its proprietor Antonio Lucena Barros nonetheless owes over $3 million in fines for the deforestation there, in response to authorities paperwork.
Barros’ lawyer Calebe Rocha mentioned in a press release that his consumer is preventing the fines in court docket and has been granted an injunction that suspends the fee of the advantageous. He additionally mentioned that no animals had been bought from the a part of Vale do Paraiso that Ibama had blocked as a consequence of deforestation.
One other plant owned by Darling Substances sourced fats from a slaughterhouse that confirmed to Reuters that it purchased tons of of cattle in 2022 and 2023 from rancher Bruno Heller, who Brazil’s Federal Police has described as presumably the Amazon’s largest deforester in a 2023 investigation.
In a press release, Heller’s lawyer Vinicius Segatto mentioned Brazil’s environmental regulation is “excessively rigorous” and that the felony case towards his consumer is ongoing.
FAT TO FUEL
Airways have been underneath stress to purchase extra inexperienced jet gasoline, which is now produced in tiny portions, to fulfill business targets of web zero emissions by 2050.
Supporters of the usage of tallow as a biofuel assert that demand for it alone is unlikely to push ranchers to clear rainforest to develop their pastures due to its financial worth – lower than 3% of what slaughterhouses get for every animal.
Diamonds’ imports from Brazil had been licensed as sustainable by the Worldwide Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC), a third-party certification physique that accredited Diamond’s plant for CORSIA.
To be eligible, biomass used for gasoline can’t come from land that was deforested after 2008 or protected areas, however the ISCC advised Reuters it didn’t examine Diamond’s provide chain as a result of it considers tallow a “byproduct” of the meat business underneath CORSIA.
Three specialists who helped design CORSIA advised Reuters that this system permits producers to omit the rating for carbon emissions and deforestation of the Amazon rainforest as a result of it assumes demand for tallow is unlikely to push ranchers to develop their herds.
The Worldwide Civil Aviation Group declined to remark when requested about whether or not it seen deforestation within the tallow provide chain as a violation of its sustainability requirements.
Nonetheless, the company mentioned it’s “always monitoring the compliance” of third-parties answerable for certifying sustainable aviation gasoline producers and welcomes data on “any potential deviations” for additional analysis.
(Reporting by Fabio Teixeira in Xinguara, Manuela Andreoni in Sao Paulo, and Allison Lampert in Montreal; enhancing by Michael Learmonth)
