*

Cattle suppliers to Diamond Green Diesel linked to Amazon

deforestation

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Airlines such as JetBlue ( JBLU ) and Southwest ( LUV ) have bought fuel

from

Diamond

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Supporters say fuel made from beef tallow is unlikely to

encourage illegal ranching

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By Fabio Teixeira, Manuela Andreoni and Allison Lampert

XINGUARA, Sept. 16 (Reuters) - A Texas refinery that

supplies green fuel to U.S. airlines has been purchasing animal

fat from cattle raised on illegally cleared lands in the Amazon

rainforest, according to a Reuters review of government tracking

data, interviews and eyewitness accounts.

Louisiana-based Diamond Green Diesel, a joint-venture

between biofuels producer Darling Ingredients ( DAR ) and petroleum

refiner Valero Energy ( VLO ), has invested hundreds of millions of

dollars into a refinery in Port Arthur, Texas that turns cattle

fat - called tallow - into a cleaner alternative to

petroleum-based jet fuel and diesel.

Diamond Green Diesel is a major player in the U.S.

sustainable fuels market. It has collected over $3 billion in

U.S. tax credits for producing biofuels since 2022, according to

filings.

But interviews and documents show at least two Brazilian

factories that supplied Diamond Green Diesel with tens of

thousands of tons of cattle fat since 2023 are sourcing some of

it from slaughterhouses that have bought animals from illegally

deforested ranches in the Amazon rainforest.

Carriers such as JetBlue ( JBLU ) and Southwest Airlines ( LUV )

, which struck deals with Valero to use the "green" jet

fuel, can claim credit for lowering their emissions because

Diamond Green Diesel's plant is certified under a United Nations

agreement curbing the impact of aviation on the climate called

CORSIA.

The global market for sustainable jet fuel is small, about

$2.9 billion in 2025 according to analysis firm SkyQuest

Technology Group, compared to the $239 billion global market for

conventional aviation fuel. But government incentives are

expected to help the market grow exponentially, pumping more

resources into the Brazilian cattle industry, the leading driver

of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Pedro Piris-Cabezas, an economist at the nonprofit

Environmental Defense Fund, said any additional demand "could

result in the expansion of herds and directly or indirectly

drive deforestation and forest degradation."

It could also violate Brazilian law. "Companies that profit

from raw materials originating from a supply chain that involves

deforestation, are also responsible for these illegalities,"

said Ricardo Negrini, a Brazilian federal prosecutor who has

opened a number of government investigations into the cattle

industry.

Diamond Green Diesel, Darling Ingredients ( DAR ), Valero Energy ( VLO ),

Southwest ( LUV ) and JetBlue ( JBLU ) did not reply to multiple requests for

comment, including detailed questions about the Brazilian tallow

supply chain.

To track the tallow trade from illegally deforested ranches

in the Amazon to Diamond Green Diesel, Reuters partnered with

the nonprofit investigative outlet Reporter Brasil, which helped

review court documents that link slaughterhouses to the tallow

plants, corporate filings, trade data, and government cattle

tracking records.

Reuters also interviewed over a dozen people involved in

each step of the beef tallow supply chain, including traders,

truck drivers, prosecutors, auditors and regulators.

Diamond Green Diesel sources tallow from multiple countries,

and Reuters was unable to determine how much of it came from

ranches in illegally-cleared land in the Amazon.

TAINTED CATTLE

In 2022 Darling Ingredients ( DAR ) CEO Randall Stuewe announced the

$557 million acquisition of several plants in Brazil, including

four in the Amazon region, that would supply "waste fats to be

used in the production of renewable diesel and sustainable

aviation fuel," according to a statement issued at the time.

Reuters found one of those rendering plants in Para state,

called Araguaia, sourced cattle fat from at least five

meatpackers that failed a May 2025 audit conducted by federal

prosecutors for slaughtering 20,000 cattle from illegally

deforested areas.

In 2023, Araguaia exported $4.4 million worth of beef tallow

from the Amazon to Diamond Green Diesel, according to trade data

from Import Genius.

In June, a Reuters journalist saw a truck with an Araguaia

logo inside the Sao Francisco slaughterhouse, which failed an

audit for buying cattle from farms on illegally deforested land.

The driver of the truck, who spoke on condition of

anonymity, told Reuters he had been picking up carcasses at the

Sao Francisco slaughterhouse and delivering them to the Araguaia

plant for two years. Two other drivers and two Sao Francisco

employees confirmed the slaughterhouse was an Araguaia

supplier.

Sao Francisco didn't confirm or deny that it is a supplier

of the Araguaia plant. It said it has been cooperating with

federal prosecutors since 2018 and that it hired an outside firm

to monitor its supply chain.

Sao Francisco sources some of its cattle indirectly from

Vale do Paraiso, a farm that had been blocked from grazing

cattle since 2006 because 15 square miles of trees had been

illegally razed, according to Brazil's environmental protection

agency, Ibama. Cattle tracking data shows that the cattle was

moved from Vale do Paraiso to a farm with a clean record before

it reached the slaughterhouse.

The agency said it lifted a commercial ban on Vale do

Paraiso last year because its owner Antonio Lucena Barros

presented a plan to restore the deforested area. Barros also

obtained a court injunction suspending a fine of over $3

million, which the agency said it will appeal.

Barros' lawyer Calebe Rocha said in a statement that his

client is fighting the fines in court and has been granted an

injunction that suspends the payment of the fine. He also said

that no animals were sold from the part of Vale do Paraiso that

Ibama had blocked due to deforestation.

Another plant owned by Darling Ingredients ( DAR ) sourced fat from

a slaughterhouse that confirmed to Reuters that it bought

hundreds of cattle in 2022 and 2023 from rancher Bruno Heller,

who Brazil's Federal Police has described as possibly the

Amazon's biggest deforester in a 2023 investigation.

In a statement, Heller's lawyer Vinicius Segatto said

Brazil's environmental law is "excessively rigorous" and that

the criminal case against his client is ongoing.

FAT TO FUEL

Airlines have been under pressure to buy more green jet fuel,

which is now produced in tiny quantities, to meet industry

targets of net zero emissions by 2050.

Supporters of the use of tallow as a biofuel assert that

demand for it alone is unlikely to push ranchers to clear

rainforest to grow their pastures because of its economic value

- less than 3% of what slaughterhouses get for each animal.

Diamonds' imports from Brazil were certified as sustainable

by the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification

(ISCC), a third-party certification body that approved Diamond's

plant for CORSIA.

To be eligible, biomass used for fuel cannot come from land

that was deforested after 2008 or protected areas, but the ISCC

told Reuters it did not investigate Diamond's supply chain

because it considers tallow a "byproduct" of the beef industry

under CORSIA.

Three experts who helped design CORSIA told Reuters that the

program allows producers to omit the score for carbon emissions

and deforestation of the Amazon rainforest because it assumes

demand for tallow is unlikely to push ranchers to grow their

herds.

The International Civil Aviation Organization declined to

comment when asked about whether it viewed deforestation in the

tallow supply chain as a violation of its sustainability

standards.

However, the agency said it is "constantly monitoring the

compliance" of third-parties responsible for certifying

sustainable aviation fuel producers and welcomes information on

"any potential deviations" for further evaluation.