South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Wild Fork owner under fire
As meat market grows locally, its parent company faces pushback
Wild Fork Foods, a meat lover’s delight, is growing in South Florida, but its parent company finds itself in the crosshairs of two U.S. senators, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
The Republican Rubio and Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey are pushing for a federal investigation of JBS USA and its Brazilian counterpart, JBS. They have raised concerns about the company’s powerful influence on the nation’s meat market.
While shoppers may welcome Wild Fork’s wide selection — frozen beef, pork, lamb, chicken, seafood and even venison and alligator — they need to understand JBS’s history of corruption, says Joe Maxwell, policy adviser for the Organization for Competitive Markets, a food industry advocate in Lincoln, Neb
“We find the consumers aren’t aware,” Maxwell said.
JBS S.A. in Brazil has been embroiled in controversy for political bribery in that country. And JBS USA is facing price-fixing allegations in the U.S., recalled millions of pounds of beef in 2018, and has spurred congressional outrage over federal awards by the Trump administration to offset the impact of a trade war with China.
Wild Fork marketing manager Tracy Sinclair said Wild Fork has opened seven stores in South Florida in the past 14 months: in Boynton Beach, Coral Springs,
Fort Lauderdale, Sunrise, Pinecrest, Coral Gables and West Kendall. A new store is planned in Doral. She said the store’s frozen meat products are shipped to Florida from a plant in Riverside, Calif.
Asked about JBS USA, she said it “supports Wild Fork Foods with both funding and strategic guidance.” But she said Wild Fork is led by an independent management team headquartered in the Miami area.
“JBS USA is not accused of any wrongdoing and has fully cooperated with all relevant U.S. authorities regarding events that occurred in the past in Brazil,” she said in an email Friday.
During a visit to a new Wild Fork in South Florida, a store manager explained that the chain’s owner, JBS, already provides fresh meat to major grocery stores around the country. Now it is “helping us get established” in the frozen-food market, he said.
Bribery charges: JBS USA stems from a Brazilian meatprocessing company controlled by Joesley and Wesley Batista. After admitting to bribery of politicians in Brazil, the Batista brothers agreed to pay nearly $3 billion in a “leniency fine” through an agreement with Brazilian prosecutors, according to a 2017 statement from their private investment holding company, J&F Investimentos.
Through the bribes, the Batista brothers allegedly secured funds from the Brazilian state-development bank to acquire the U.S. food companies, which has given their company a dominant position in the beef and poultry markets, some congressional leaders contend.
Since 2007, the brothers have been on a multimillion-dollar meat brand shopping spree, buying some of the largest beef, pork and chicken producers in the U.S., including Swift Foods, Smithfield beef operations and poultry producer Pilgrim’s Pride.
“No individual should benefit from an ill-gotten gain,” Maxwell said.
Some congressional leaders agree.
“We write to express our concern about the ability of foreign companies involved in illicit financial activities to acquire United States companies in the food sector, specifically the Brazilian meat-processing conglomerate JBS S.A., which engaged in bribery of public officials as a methodology to obtain funds that it then used for such acquisitions,” Sens. Rubio and Menendez wrote to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in October.
“These acquisitions have serious implications for the security, safety, and resiliency of our food system,” the senators said in their letter.
The senators received this response: “The Treasury Secretary shares your interest in protecting national security while promoting investment and job creation in the United States,” said Brian McGuire, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary of legislative affairs.
The senators are calling for an investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a little-known agency that scrutinizes foreign investments for national security impact. The committee has the power to force a fire sale of illegally purchased assets, as it has with some Chinese technology investments. McGuire did not say in his response to the senators whether the committee would investigate JBS, as all such reviews are confidential.
Rubio, like other senators, was attending the Trump impeachment trial this week and couldn’t be reached for comment. He also alleges in his letter that JBS has ties with Venezuela n President Nicolas Maduro, whose government is under new sanctions by the Trump administration.
Trade war bailout: Farm industry advocates also are irked that JBS has benefited from a reported $100 million in a taxpayer-funded bailout by the Trump administration, designed to offset the effect on farmers of the trade war with China, according to congressional reports.
Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democratic leader who sits on a House subcommittee responsible for the Department of Agriculture, complained in a November letter to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue about JBS getting bailout money “meant for struggling American farmers.” She, too, has demanded an investigation.
Beyond the political entanglements, JBS USA faces other issues that could affect consumers seeking low prices on quality meat.
Multiple lawsuits against JBS acquisition Pilgrim’s Pride, as well as its competitor Tyson, allege collusion in price-fixing chicken prices at Georgia ports. A criminal probe was launched in June.
And in 2019, a JBS plant in Tolleson, Arizona, recalled more than 12 million pounds of raw and ground beef due to a risk of contamination with salmonella newport, a strain of the bacteria that is a common cause of food poisoning, according to an FDA report on the recall.
“No individual should benefit
from an ill-gotten gain.”
Joe Maxwell, policy adviser for the Organization
for Competitive Markets