Written by Fabio Texira, Manuella Andreoni and Alison Lambert
Xinguara (Reuters) -Texas refinery that supplies green fuel for American airlines was buying animal fats from livestock that were illegally cleared in lands in the Amazon rainforest, according to Reuters review of government -affiliated data, interviews and eyewitness accounts.
Louisiana-based Diesel Green Green has invested a joint venture between beloved biofel products and oil refineries, Valero Energy, hundreds of millions of dollars in a refinery in Port Arthur, Texas that transforms livestock-called fat-in a cleaner alternative to petroleum-based Jet fuel and diesel.
Diamond Green Diesel is a major player in the sustainable fuel market in the United States. It has raised more than $ 3 billion in US tax credits to produce biofuels since 2022, according to the stadiums.
But the interviews and documents show at least two Brazilian manufacturers who have provided diamond green diesel with tens of thousands of tons of livestock fat since 2023, some of which are from the slaughterhouses that bought animals from an illegal farm in the Amazon rainforest.
Transportation companies such as Jetblue and SouthWest Airlines, which have been dealing with Valero to use “green” aircraft fuel, can demand credit to reduce their emissions because the Diamond Green Diesel factory is approved under the United Nations agreement that sailed the effect of flying on the climate called Corsia.
The global sustainable jet fuel market, about $ 2.9 billion in 2025, according to the SkyQUEST Technology Group, compared to the global market of $ 239 billion for traditional airline fuel. But government incentives are expected to help the market to grow significantly, pumping more resources in the Brazilian livestock industry, which is the main driver to destroy the Amazon rain forests.
“Any additional demand” can lead to the expansion of herds and pay the removal of forests directly or indirectly. “
Brazilian law can violate. “The companies that benefit from raw materials that arise from the supply chain that involve the removal of forests are also responsible for these violations,” said Ricardo Nigerini, the Brazilian Federal Prosecutor who opened a number of government investigations into the cattle industry.
The green diesel diesel, the beloved ingredients, the Valero Energy, Southwest and Jetblue did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including detailed questions about the Brazilian supply chain.
To trace the lynid trade from illegal farms in the Amazon to Diamond Diesel, Reuters made a partnership with the correspondent of the Brasil Monural Investigation Port, which helped review the court documents linking the slaughterhouses with fat plantations, corporate files, trade data, and government livestock tracking records.
Reuters conducted an interview with more than ten people involved in each of the thorny supply chain, including merchants, truck drivers, public prosecutors, auditors and organizers.
Sources of green diesel Diamond from multiple countries, and Reuters were unable to determine the amount of farms in the lands that were illegally placed in the Amazon.
Polluted livestock
In 2022, the CEO of Darling announced the components of Randal Story that $ 557 million for many factories in Brazil, including four in the Amazon region, which will provide “waste for use in renewable diesel production and sustainable flight fuel”, according to a statement issued at that time.
Reuters found one of those factories presented in the state of the paragraph, which is called Araguaia, from at least five meat fat sources who failed to check in May 2025 conducted by Federal Prosecutors to slaughter 20,000 livestock from illegal areas.
In 2023, Araguaia exported the beef worth $ 4.4 million from Amazon to the diamond green diesel, according to trade data from the import of a genius.
In June, a Reuters journalist saw a truck with an Araguaia logo inside the Sao Francisco slaughterhouse, who failed to check livestock from farms on illegal land.
The truck driver, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that he was picking bodies in the Sao Francisco slaughterhouse and handing them to the Arajwa factory for two years. Two other drivers and two Sao Francisco employees confirmed that Slaughterhouse was the Araguia resource.
Sao Francisco has not confirmed or denied that it is a resource for the Araguaia factory. She said that she had cooperated with federal prosecutors since 2018 and that she had rented an external company to monitor her supply chain.
Sao Francisco Sources illegally from Vale Do Paraiso, a farm that has been prevented from grazing livestock since 2006 because 15 square miles of trees have been illegally combined, according to the Environmental Protection Agency in Brazil, IBAMA. Livestock tracking data shows that livestock was transferred from the Vale Do Paraiso to a farm with a clean record before reaching a slaughterhouse.
The agency canceled the Vale Do Paraiso ban last year because a court decided that the statute of statute of limitations had ended, but its owner Antonio Lucena Barros is still a debtor of more than $ 3 million in fines to remove forests there, according to government documents.
Barros Calib Rosha’s lawyer said in a statement that his client is fighting fines in court and was granted a judicial order suspended the payment of the fine. He also said that no animal of part of the Vale Do Paraiso has been sold by Ebama due to the removal of the forests.
Another factory owned by the components loved by fat sources from a slaughterhouse confirmed to Reuters that it had bought hundreds of livestock in 2022 and 2023 from the Bruno Heil Farm, which was described by the Brazilian Federal Police as perhaps the largest cavity in the Amazon in achieving 2023.
In a statement, Hiller Vinicius SEGATO lawyer said that Brazil’s environmental law was “very strict” and that the criminal case against his client is continuing.
Fuel fat
Airlines have been pressured to buy more green jet fuel, which are now produced in small quantities, to achieve industry goals of net zero emissions by 2050.
Supporters are unlikely to push the use of fat as a peripheral way that the demand for this alone pushes livestock breeders to cleanse the rainforest to develop their pastures due to their economic value – less than 3 % of the slaughterhouses that each animal gets.
Diamonds from Brazil has been adopted as sustainable by international sustainability and carbon certificates (ISCC), a third -party certificate body that approved the Diamond factory for Corsia.
To be eligible, the biomass used for fuel from the land that was removed after 2008 or protected areas cannot come, but ISCC told Reuters that it had not been achieved in the Diamond supply chain because it is a fork as a “secondary product” for the manufacture of beef under Corsia.
Three experts who helped design Corsia Reuters have told the program that the program allows producers to delete the degree of carbon emissions and remove forests in the Amazon rainforest because it is assumed that the demand for fat is unlikely to push livestock breeders to grow their pieces.
The International Civil Aviation Organization refused to comment when it was asked whether it had seen the removal of forests in the forklines chain as a violation of sustainability standards.
However, the agency said it “is constantly monitoring compliance” of the third parties responsible for ratifying the flying fuel producers and welcomes information about “any possible deviations” for more evaluation.
(Participated in the reports of Fabio Texhara in Xinjuara, Manuella Andone in São Paulo, and Alison Lambert in Montreal; edited by Michael Lermond)
