The Batista brothers: Meat and money

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:05)
It's 2017, and a lawyer sits in front of his computer. Let's imagine a large wood-paneled room befitting the legal council to two of the richest and most powerful men in Brazil.

**Simon Jack** (0:16)
He finishes typing and hits send. He heads to the door, but something is nagging at the back of his mind. He returns to his computer and opens his email sent folder.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:26)
The blood drains from his face. With horror, he realises he attached the wrong audio file to his email, an email that was going directly to Brazil's Federal Prosecutors Office.

**Simon Jack** (0:38)
The attachment was supposed to save his clients. Instead, his mistake will send them to jail.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:45)
Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode, we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.

**Simon Jack** (0:52)
We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million on to a billion.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:56)
My name is Zing Tsjeng and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

**Simon Jack** (0:59)
And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:01)
I have to say, I've never sent the wrong email in quite the same way this lawyer did.

**Simon Jack** (1:06)
I think I've replied to a group when I am meant to reply to one person. I have perhaps been unflattering about someone else on the group but I've never a disastrous one like this.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:17)
And not one that sent your clients to jail.

**Simon Jack** (1:19)
No, not yet anyway. This is the story of two Brazilian brothers, Wesley and Joesley Batista. They're 54 and 53 respectively and each of them is worth $5.7 billion.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:33)
They own a company called JBS, the biggest meat producer in the world. If you're a vegan or vegetarian, maybe turn off now.

**Simon Jack** (1:41)
Yes, this episode will involve the referencing of killing of a lot of animals because JBS slaughters over 13 million animals a day.
That is, per year, 5 billion chickens, 53 million pigs, 27 million cows and 8 million lambs. If you eat meat, you probably eat products made by JBS.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:02)
And this is a meaty story in many ways, because this isn't just a story about Brazil's economic growth. The company controlled by the Batista brothers had to pay a $3.2 billion fine and spent time in jail in one of the biggest corruption scandals in history.

**Simon Jack** (2:18)
But today, they are worth more money than ever. Their shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange. They can even be found at meetings in the White House. Probably worthy of a movie. So let us set the opening scenes.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:33)
The Batista brothers' story begins with their father, Jose Batista Sabrino. In 1953, he opened a small butchers in the Brazilian city of Annapolis. It had the capacity to slaughter a measly five animals a day. Now, Brazil in the 1950s was in a period of rapid modernisation and industrial growth and a new capital city, Brasília, was constructed between 1956 to 1960 under the slogan 50 years progress in five. Jose was attracted by the tax incentives in that city. You get four years tax free for setting up there. So he moved there and he gave his company a big boost.

**Simon Jack** (3:09)
And he supplied meat to the cafeterias at the construction sites, building this new capital.
In 1968, he expanded his business with the purchase of his first cattle processing unit, an abattoir, a slaughterhouse, in other words, in the Brazilian state of Goiás. Within two years, it had quadrupled its slaughter rate from 30 cattle per day to 120 And he named his company Freeboy in 1972 That is a combination of refrigerator and bull, which is exactly what they were selling. And that year, 1972, Wesley and Joesley were both born. Only 10 months between them, they had four siblings, one older brother and three sisters.

**Zing Tsjeng** (3:49)
Now, as a country, Brazil was primed for the beef industry because of its vast grazing lands. And industrialization meant that Brazilians were consuming so much more of it. And at this point, Brazil had the world's fourth largest supply of cattle, 105 million cows mooing all over the country. Only India, the Soviet Union and the US had more than that.

**Simon Jack** (4:10)
Yeah, but sheer numbers mean little in the beef industry. What's more important is the rate of slaughter. And that in 1972 was Brazil's biggest obstacle.
Because its slaughter rate, these are horrible measures, isn't it, from the country? The slaughter rate was only 12% of the herd each year, compared with 24% in Argentina and 40% in the United States. Why is that? Well, poor quality pastures meant cows had less nutrition, so they had to wait longer until they were fattened up. They had to wait until they were five years old to slaughter, compared with just 30 months in Argentina or 16 months in the United States.