The company, which is the world’s largest meat producer, had to shut down its operations due to a cyberattack.
An incident at a major JBS facility in Australia over the weekend has affected multiple production sites globally.
JBS is the world’s biggest beef and poultry producer, and the second-largest pork producer. With annual sales of over US$65 billion and a team of over 245,000 employees globally, the company is one of the world’s largest producers of fresh meat, seafood, and plant-protein foods.
JBS Australia’s CEO Brent Eastwood confirmed the attack on Monday. Although there was no official statement from the company, it was widely reported on social media platforms.
The incident has also affected the supply chain of the company. As a result, some of its plants in Australia were temporarily shut down. The impacted technology used by meat processors is crucial to the quality of the product, Australia’s Agriculture Minister David Littleproud told ABC:
“The technology they use goes to the heart of the quality assurance of the beef they are processing. We need to make sure we can get that up and going to give confidence not just to consumers in Australia, but also to our export markets.
Law enforcement agencies in Australia and other countries are investigating the attack.
“They are obviously working with law enforcement agencies here in Australia and we’re working in partnership with other countries to get to the bottom of this.”
The attackers might have used ransomware to gain access to the company’s systems, judging by the fact that the attackers chose to hit the company on the weekend.
Littleproud did not confirm the hypothesis but said that the company’s operations will suffer from the impact.
“It will depend how long this goes on for, and how long JBS are offline, for it is a supply chain that starts from the farm gate, right through to feed lots, to truck drivers,” Littleproud added.
The Australian Meat Industry Employees Union’s Matt Journeaux said that the cyberattack would affect thousands of employees of the meat processing giant.
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