Luxury Leather, Amazon Fires: New Findings Deepen Scandal Linking Global Fashion to Illegal Deforestation Ahead of COP30 in Pará
As world leaders prepare to meet in Belém, Pará, for the COP30 climate talks, two recent investigations expose how the global fashion industry has close ties to the destruction in the Amazon—right in the state hosting the conference. New research by AidEnvironment reveals Brazilian meatpacker FriGol, one of the country’s largest slaughterhouses, continues to purchase cattle likely raised on illegally deforested land and Indigenous Territories. Just months ago, UK-based non-profit Earthsight exposed the links between FriGol and Italian leather producers supplying some of the biggest names in luxury fashion.
Fresh evidence: AidEnvironment’s findings strengthen Earthsight’s undercover exposé
Earthsight’s report “The Hidden Price of Luxury” (June 2025) traced leather from FriGol’s slaughterhouses in Pará to Italian tanneries Conceria Cristina and Faeda – suppliers to Coach, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, and Hugo Boss. Earthsight’s investigators analysed court rulings, shipment data, and satellite imagery, and went undercover inside Italy’s leather sector.
AidEnvironment’s FriGol Compliance Checker report presents independent geospatial findings and verified farm-level case studies suggesting continued illegal deforestation risks within FriGol’s supply chain. The report reveals that FriGol slaughterhouses in Água Azul do Norte and São Félix do Xingu, Pará, are likely connected to indirect suppliers involved in illegal deforestation. Five cattle ranches analysed in the report, located across Pará and Mato Grosso, together cleared more than 1,400 hectares of Amazon rainforest after the EUDR cut-off date of 31 December 2020, equivalent to over 700 thousand tonnes of carbon emissions.
Among them:
• Fazenda Granada II — its owners were fined over BRL 17 million for clearing thousands of hectares of Amazon Forest through illegal burning. Fires razed 1,684 ha in Fazenda Granada II in 2024;
• Fazenda Paraíso da Central — noncompliant with the criteria of the Amazon cattle supplier monitoring protocol, having a legal reserve deficit and permanent preservation area deficit, while lacking authorization to remove native vegetation, but still likely linked to FriGol through cattle transfers with neighbouring farms; and
• Fazenda Santa Tereza — bordering the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory, the most deforested Indigenous land in Brazil between 2019–2022.
Each case, the report warns, would violate both Brazilian environmental law and the EUDR if products derived from these farms enter the European market.
FriGol’s response: narrow focus, broad blind spots
FriGol told AidEnvironment that it “has never purchased from the farms identified” and that its cattle procurement follows the Beef on Track protocol developed with Brazil’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF). The company claims to monitor 100 % of direct suppliers and aims to trace “level-1” indirect suppliers by 2025 and all by 2030.
Yet AidEnvironment notes that FriGol’s monitoring excludes most indirect suppliers—the very links through which cattle are “laundered” from embargoed or illegally deforested farms into legal supply chains. “FriGol’s replies focus only on direct purchases, ignoring the multi-tier cattle transfers that allow forest destruction to be hidden in plain sight,” said Sarah Drost, Senior Researcher at AidEnvironment. “With evidence of recent forest loss on indirect supplier farms, the company’s policies are simply not sufficient.”
The findings reveal inconsistencies between stated corporate sustainability commitments and verified sourcing practices. While FriGol and its partner tannery Durlicouros promote blockchain pilots and traceability pledges to be achieved by 2030, AidEnvironment’s satellite analysis shows deforestation continuing today near their Pará facilities—in the same Brazilian state where negotiators will soon discuss global forest protection.
From slaughterhouse to catwalk: a global chain of complicity
A FriGol Instagram post (16 February 2024) seems to suggest that leather from FriGol’s Água Azul do Nort plant in Pará is sold to Durlicouros’ tannery in Xinguara. Durlicouros exported over 14,700 tonnes of hides from Pará to Italy between 2020 and 2023. According to trade data reviewed by Earthsight, nearly a quarter of that volume went to the Veneto-based tanneries Faeda and Conceria Cristina, suppliers to multiple luxury fashion houses.
When confronted, Coach declined to comment on its use of Brazilian leather. Yet Earthsight’s undercover investigators were told directly by a Conceria Cristina representative that Coach is a regular buyer. Most of the other brands mentioned in the investigation denied using Brazilian leather, while Fendi and Hugo Boss launched internal investigations into their supply chains. Both Conceria Cristina and Faeda hold gold-level certification from the Leather Working Group (LWG)—a standard that does not require tracing cattle back to ranches of origin. “Consumers of luxury products expect that high price tags come with assurances they are not contributing to deforestation or the theft of Indigenous lands. Our investigation shows that such trust is misplaced”, said Earthsight’s Latin America lead Rafael Pieroni. “LWG itself admitted to us that its certification is not ‘a guarantee of deforestation-free status.”
Pará: epicentre of deforestation—and host of COP30
The revelations carry particular weight as COP30—the first UN climate summit ever held in the Amazon—will take place in Belém, Pará, from November 10 to 21, 2025. Over the past two decades, Pará has lost an area of forest nearly twice the size of Portugal, largely to cattle ranching. The Parakanã people of the Apyterewa territory have endured decades of land invasions and at least six armed attacks in the first six months of 2025 alone. “Hosting COP30 in Pará while luxury brands profit from cattle raised on stolen Indigenous lands is an affront to the very goals of the summit,” said Pieroni. Drost added: “COP30 offers a historic chance to turn pledges into action, but success will depend on whether governments and industry address the root economic drivers of deforestation”.
Regulatory loopholes and delayed accountability
The findings also spotlight failures in Western regulation. The EUDR, which will require companies to prove that commodities like beef and leather are deforestation-free, was delayed until 30 December 2025 after intense lobbying by the leather industry and is again under pressure for further delay and simplification since October 2025. Italian tanneries even campaigned for an exemption of leather earlier this year. In the UK, the Environment Act 2021 provisions banning imports from illegally deforested land remain unenforced and full of loopholes.
Call for action ahead of COP30
Both organisations urge delegates and governments heading to COP30 to treat these revelations as a test of credibility:
• To the Brazilian government: enforce the TAC da Carne Legal (Legal Beef Conduct Adjustment) agreements and extend monitoring to all indirect suppliers.
• To the EU and UK: resist industry pressure, implement the EUDR and Environment Act without delay and simplification, and ensure full traceability to the farm plot level.
• To the fashion industry: stop hiding behind certification labels and publish transparent supplier lists linking each leather product to its origin.
For more information:
AidEnvironment: Sarah Drost, drost@aidenvironment.org
Earthsight: Rafael Pieroni, rafaelpieroni@earthsight.org.uk;
Lara Shirra White, LaraShirraWhite@earthsight.org.uk