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SNEAK PEEK: Exclusive interview with CEO of JBS USA
The September issue of MEAT&POULTRY magazine will include an update on JBS USA one year after its acquisition of Swift & Co., based on an exclusive M&P interview with the firm’s CEO, Wesley Batista. During a candid conversation with M&P Contributing Editor Steve Kay that lasted more than three hours, Batista discussed the business strategy driving the Brazilian powerhouse as well as the challenges facing the company and the industry as a whole. The interview in its entirety will be published in the September issue of M&P and will also be published online at www.MEATPOULTRY.com. Below is a glimpse of the report as Batista discusses the importance of fostering positive relationships with U.S. cattle producers. M&P: What are the ways you have acted in the past year to strengthen your supply lines with U.S. cattle feeders? Wesley Batista: We are working to strengthen them in two ways. First, Swift Beef is very competitive now. We are about $50 better off in per-head plant costs. So, we can be much more competitive in cattle procurement and beef sales. We can be more aggressive in the live-cattle market. We are also working to improve our relationships with producers. The industry (meaning packers) needs to hear from its suppliers to discuss our business. We want to open more doors with them to discuss how we can together strengthen the U.S. beef business. Because many times in the past, producers worked in one direction and the industry went in another. We’ve been doing this forever. My father (JBS founder Jose Sobrinho Batista) was a cattle producer first and not just a packer. He still has a large cow-calf business in Brazil with many thousands of cows, and JBS has feedlots. So, we know the producers’ life. In meetings with producers, I say: ‘We are an industry that disassembles your cattle.’ If I were a producer, I would not want my product not to have value added to it. I also tell them we need to work to stimulate demand for beef, to reopen markets and open new markets and add value through brands and new products. I tell them, the U.S. has 300 million people. If we add one pound of beef consumption per person, that’s three hundred million more pounds sold. We tell them about sharing efficiencies. At the end of the day, that will benefit the whole industry. In the past year, we have concentrated a lot of energy on operations and reducing costs to be more efficient. This is good for the whole packing industry because we have made Swift much more competitive and we have stimulated change for everybody. This is very important for producers and consumers because everyone pays for inefficiencies. 
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