The world's largest meat supplier JBS says it has made 'significant progress' in restoring its systems after plants in North America and Australia were shut down following a ransomware attack.
JBS USA is the majority shareholder in poultry and pork supplier, Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation, which also had its systems disabled. The incident is currently being investigated by the FBI. The company confirmed that in the US it had been unable to ship product from nearly all its facilities for a day. JBS sites in Canada and Australia were also forced to close temporarily. Operations in the UK and Mexico are reported not to have been affected.
In a statement, JBS and Pilgrim’s commented: ‘The company continues to make progress in resuming plant operations in the US and Australia. Several of the company’s pork, poultry and prepared foods plants are now operational and its Canada beef facility has resumed production.”
JBS said it was not aware of any evidence that any customer, supplier or employee data had been compromised.
Following the revelation of the attack, Andre Nogueira, JBS USA CEO said: “JBS USA and Pilgrim’s are a critical part of the food supply chain and we recognise our responsibility to our team members, producers and consumers to resume operations as soon as possible.
“Our systems are coming back online and we are not sparing any resources to fight this threat. We have cybersecurity plans in place to address these types of issues and we are successfully executing those plans. Given the progress our IT professionals and plant teams have made in the last 24 hours, the vast majority of our beef, pork, poultry and prepared foods plants will be operational tomorrow.”
'No major impact on supply'
In a statement, the Australian Red Meat Council said there was no indication that the cyberattack would cause a major impact on Australian domestic red meat and pork products supply.
Karine Jean-Pierre, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, said JBS been offered assistance after notifying the government of the attack. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has also contacted other major meat processors to ensure they were aware of the situation, and that the US government said it would continue to assess any ongoing impact on supply.
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
