- In September 2024, Earthsight published Secret Ingredient, which linked chicken products sold by McDonald’s and Europe’s leading supermarkets to illegal deforestation, land grabbing, corruption and rights abuses in Brazil’s Cerrado
- Now, satellite imagery reveals that two soy producers exposed in our report for deforesting 23,164 hectares of native vegetation have cleared an additional 986 hectares on their farms in western Bahia state
- Two of the agribusinesses implicated in Secret Ingredient were certified by the leading green label for soy, the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS). RTRS has not yet concluded the investigation it launched into these producers following our exposé, or taken measures to close loopholes which allow for the certification of the Cerrado’s deforesters
- The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) has the potential to reduce the footprint of European consumption on the world’s forests. Despite a one-year delay to enforcement already granted at the end of 2024, the EUDR is once again under threat of being stripped of its substance
The producers
Secret Ingredient revealed the links between chicken products sold by McDonald’s and Europe’s leading supermarkets – Carrefour, Intermarché, Edeka and Albert Heijn – and environmental and rights abuses in Brazil’s Bahia state. The investigation traced soy used by European feed manufacturers to agri-trading giants Cargill and Bunge. The two companies in turn sourced soy from producers clearing land in the Cerrado biome: the Horita Group, Mizote Group and Franciosi Agro.
A year after Secret Ingredient, recent satellite imagery reveals that Franciosi Agro and the Mizote Group have cleared an additional 986ha since May 2024. This includes 381ha deforested after the publication of our report – equivalent to over 533 football fields. Although they obtained the relevant deforestation permits, Earthsight’s analysis indicates this clearance includes areas of forest, which means soy grown on this land would be non-compliant with the upcoming EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). The European law bans products from areas deforested after 2020.
Franciosi Agro and the Mizote Group were responsible for 23,164ha of deforestation in western Bahia from January 2021 to April 2024. Earthsight’s analysis of available deforestation permits indicates that 60 per cent (13,890ha) of this clearance was not authorised, suggesting the land was deforested illegally.i The EUDR requires not only that commodities be deforestation-free, but also produced in compliance with producer-country laws, meaning soy from these illegally converted areas will be banned under the regulation. This is the case even if these lands do not meet the definition of forests used by the law.
The green label
Both Franciosi Agro and the Horita Group were certified by the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) until the publication of Secret Ingredient led to the suspension of their certificates. Despite Franciosi clearing 8,573ha on 12 of its properties between 2021 and 2023, two of its other farms – where no recent deforestation has been detected – had been certified by RTRS since 2022. Several farms owned by Horita had been certified since 2023. To become certified, soy farms are audited against environmental and social criteria laid out in RTRS’s standard.
The Horita Group was certified by RTRS despite violating these criteria. Walter Horita, an owner of the Group, was implicated in one of Brazil’s largest corruption scandals, seemingly in breach of the standard’s requirement to adhere to relevant laws. Contrary to RTRS’s ban on conversion of native forests after 2009, 11,000ha were illegally deforestedii on Horita’s RTRS-certified Centúria farm between 2012 and 2018.
Agribusinesses are not required to comply with RTRS’s standard on all their farms to become a certified producer. Instead, they can cherry-pick properties they wish to certify, while carrying out deforestation on others.
On this issue, RTRS lags behind certification schemes for other forest-risk commodities that do not permit this, such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). RSPO requires that all plantations operated by a single company, even if not certified, are deforestation-free, and also that a company must certify all their properties within a maximum of five years. The Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) Policy for Association similarly excludes a company from certification if any company within its corporate group engages in 'unacceptable activities', including forest conversion and destruction of high conservation value areas.
Between 2021 and 2023, Franciosi Agro cleared thousands of hectares of vegetation, in some cases illegally,iii on non-certified properties nearby its certified farms. This includes 3570ha deforested on its Santa Isabel farm complex – around 1244ha greater than what Franciosi Agro was authorised to deforest at the time according to available deforestation permits.
The location of Franciosi Agro’s RTRS-certified properties in relation to its Santa Isabel farm complex, where the company cleared 3570ha between 2021 and 2023.
RTRS launched an investigation into Franciosi Agro and the Horita Group in response to Secret Ingredient, suspending their certificates in the meantime. Almost one year on, RTRS has not yet concluded this investigation, reportedly due to lack of internal capacity.
There is also no indication that the scheme has taken any measures to close loopholes which allow producers to certify some properties while carrying out rampant deforestation on others. When contacted by Earthsight in August 2025, RTRS said it would consider action on this matter following the results of their investigation, suggesting changes to their standard could be on the table. We shared evidence of recent deforestation on Franciosi Agro’s properties with RTRS to support their assessment, and were told that if the suspension on the company’s certificates is lifted, this clearance will be taken into account for their next audit.
Closing this loophole is critical to ensuring the scheme does not reward the Cerrado’s deforesters with a green stamp of approval. Without this change, it could be possible for Franciosi Agro to continue to certify new properties, despite the clearance of native vegetation described above.
The Cerrado
In the Cerrado, a vital carbon sink that supports irreplaceable biodiversity, destruction has continued. It was the biome with the largest deforested area in Brazil in 2024, losing over 652,000ha – approximately 2500 football pitches a day.
Soy cultivation is a major driver of conversion: 75 per cent of forest loss in the Cerrado in 2024 was in the Matopiba region, where soy expansion continues at a rapid pace and the farms investigated in Secret Ingredient are located.
The negative effects of soy expansion on the Cerrado extend beyond the clearance of native vegetation and are felt throughout the region’s waterways and by the people who live there. Filling the irrigation needs of aggressive agricultural expansion may lead key Cerrado rivers to lose a third of their water levels by 2050, with knock-on effects for other river basins reliant on the biome.
Traditional communities face pesticide contamination and encroachment into their lands, often bringing violence and conflict. Estrondo – an agricultural mega-estate where Horita operates several properties – is one of Brazil’s most notorious cases of land grabbing.
Sunset in the Cerrado
The EU
The EU remains a major destination for soy leaving western Bahia – Earthsight’s analysis reveals import volumes reached almost 1.2 million tonnes in 2024. Approximately 95 per cent was exported by Bunge and Cargill – both of which were supplied by the agribusinesses exposed in Secret Ingredient.
In letters to Earthsight, Bunge and Cargill said they carry out regular checks on their suppliers for compliance with their company policies and Brazilian law. Bunge stated it has achieved 100 per cent traceability for its direct and indirect suppliers in priority regions in the Brazilian Cerrado. Cargill denies sourcing from any illegal areas. There is no indication that either trader has stopped sourcing soy from the producers exposed in Secret Ingredient. When we shared evidence documenting recent deforestation on properties belonging to Franciosi Agro and the Mizote Group, neither Bunge nor Cargill specified measures they will take to ensure soy from these properties does not enter their supply chains.
The top five EU destinations for Bunge and Cargill soy from Bahia in 2024 were France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. Other key markets were Slovenia, Poland, Belgium and Romania.
Voluntary measures and green labels have failed to drive sustainability – laws requiring companies to act are long overdue. The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) can stop EU supply chains from contributing to global forest loss by banning products produced on deforested land or in violation of producer-country laws.
Yet despite its potential, the EUDR has faced relentless pushback from some industry representatives and politicians seeking to delay and weaken it. In the last quarter of 2024, EU policymakers agreed to postpone its enforcement by one year to December 2025. Now, with three months to go, the EUDR is facing a new round of threats.
These include calls to reopen the law from European trade associations – including FEFAC, the association representing European feed manufacturers, which are major users of imported soy.
Reopening the law would pave the way for further amendments and uncertainty, and could spell the end of the EUDR in its current form. With the climate and biodiversity crises accelerating year by year, there is no time for delay and no room for half measures. The EUDR, enforced with no further changes or delay, is central to the EU meeting its climate and biodiversity goals, and an essential step towards ending global deforestation.
The Horita Group and Franciosi Agro did not respond to Earthsight’s requests for comment on Secret Ingredient or this latest article. In response to Earthsight’s latest findings, the Mizote Group told us it had the appropriate permits for the 31ha the company cleared on one of its farms in March 2025, and that none of the cleared area overlapped with the property’s legal reserve. Responses received from the Mizote Group, RTRS, Bunge and Cargill to this latest article are available in full here. Responses to Secret Ingredient are available here.
i Earthsight researchers reviewed permits granted by Inema, Bahia’s environment agency responsible for authorising the clearance of vegetation, but were unable to locate permits accounting for the entire 23,164ha cleared across Franciosi Agro and Mizote Group farms.
ii Inema was unable to identify permits for 11,285ha of deforestation carried out between 2012 and 2018. Inema, ‘Análise Espacial e Temporal de Cadastros de Imóveis Cefir - Agronegócio Condomínio Cachoeira do Estrondo’, Technical Report COTIC, 13 Jul 2020, copy held by Earthsight.
iii Previous NGO reports, fines and embargoes against Franciosi Agro provide evidence of the company’s illegal activity. Three of its farms, for example, have been embargoed for non-compliance with environmental law, restricting productive activity on these properties. Between 2008 and 2022, Franciosi Agro was fined approximately BRL7.5 million (EUR1.25 million) by Brazil’s environment agency, Ibama. Several reports by NGOs have also exposed deforestation non-compliant with Brazil’s Forest Code on Franciosi Agro farms. For more details and references, see Secret Ingredient.
iv Legal reserves are areas within rural properties that companies are required to preserve under the Brazilian Forest Code. According to the law, legal reserves in the Cerrado must make up at least 20 per cent of a farm’s total area.
