This article addresses Sinergia's response to our review of them. Due to the length of Sinergia's response, we've summarized their key points for readability, with citations showing the parts being summarized. If you prefer not to rely on our summaries, we've also created a version of this article that shows Sinergia's full response without any summaries, which can be found here.
We said that Sinergia took credit for securing a commitment from JBS to ban ear notching by 2023, but that this commitment does not exist.
Sinergia acknowledged that JBS did not commit to banning ear notching by 2023, and stated that they meant to say JBS committed to banning ear notching by 2027. According to Sinergia:
"Sinergia's Brazilian team, which is native in Portuguese but not English, made a minor mistake in the spreadsheet shared with ACE. It stated 'Committed to banning ear notching by 2023,' when it should have said 'Committed to banning ear notching in 2023.' Sinergia acknowledges that this mistake shifts the meaning of the sentence and it has since been corrected."
Sinergia also indicated in their response that none of their metrics had been inflated.
We appreciate Sinergia acknowledging this inaccuracy. However, we believe there are two important points that should be noted:
We said that Sinergia took credit for securing a 2023 commitment from JBS to not use gestation crates in new projects, but that this policy already existed prior to 2023.
Sinergia responded stating that JBS has made two separate commitments related to gestation crate usage:
Sinergia states they were taking credit for the 2023 Pre-Implantation Commitment, not the 2015 Group Housing Commitment.
Sinergia also states the following about the 2023 Pre-Implantation Commitment:
"This new commitment, finalized in 2023 after negotiations with Sinergia and other animal protection organizations, represents a real step forward."
The policy referenced in the alleged 2023 Pre-Implantation Commitment existed prior to 2023. JBS's 2021 sustainability report already stated JBS's "new systems use a pre-implantation transfer system."
Contrary to Sinergia's statements, there was no "real step forward" in 2023. This is a pre-existing company policy being presented as a new commitment.
Note: We wanted to learn more about Sinergia's alleged negotiations with JBS, so we asked Sinergia how many meetings they had with JBS. Sinergia responded stating they don't disclose this information without a confidentiality agreement. We then asked to sign the confidentiality agreement, but Sinergia refused to send it to us.
We said that Sinergia took credit for getting several Brazilian meat processors to end their use of teeth clipping on pigs in 2023, but that teeth clipping pigs was already illegal in Brazil prior to the alleged commitments.
Note: we cited Normative Instruction 113 (which has prohibited teeth clipping since February 1, 2021) as the basis for teeth clipping being illegal in Brazil.
Sinergia responded acknowledging that Normative Instruction 113 (N113) prohibits teeth clipping in Brazil, but indicated that violations of N113 are common since companies can justify non-compliance by citing N113's lack of legal force.
We confirmed with ACE that N113 was the basis for all of the legal deadlines used in their impact calculations (which assumed that once a legal deadline passes, the prohibited practice completely stops). Sinergia validated ACE's impact calculations, and did not stop ACE from using N113 as the basis for legal deadlines. Sinergia then advertised ACE's impact calculations to donors.
It is inconsistent for Sinergia to now claim that N113 has a lack of legal force. This inconsistency is critical, as it allows Sinergia to continue to receive credit for helping millions of piglets through teeth clipping commitments, even though teeth clipping was already prohibited by N113 prior to the alleged commitments.
Furthermore, although Sinergia claims N113 has a "lack of legal force," Sinergia also states that non-compliance with N113 "can result in administrative sanctions."
Definitionally, if non-compliance with N113 "can result in administrative sanctions," N113 does not have a "lack of legal force." Administrative sanctions are a form of legally enforceable punishment. Fines are a common type of administrative sanction, and a number of administrative sanctions issued by agencies in Brazil have been fines exceeding 10,000,000 Brazilian Real (which converts to over 1,000,000 US Dollars).
We said that Sinergia took credit for getting Aurora Cooperative (often shortened to Aurora Coop or Aurora) to end their use of surgical castration on pigs in 2023, but that Aurora Cooperative's website already indicated they don't use the surgical castration on pigs prior to the alleged commitment.
Sinergia responded stating that in 2022 Aurora Cooperative merely recommended using immunocastration (an alternative to surgical castration), but in 2023 Aurora Cooperative changed its policy and began solely using immunocastration.
Sinergia's response also states:
"Sinergia engaged in negotiations with the company to ensure this improvement."
An archive of Aurora Cooperative's website from 2022 shows that their website already said "The Cooperative only chooses to adopt Immunocastration, as it is a less invasive practice."
Contrary to Sinergia's statements, Aurora Cooperative's immunocastration policy was not changed in 2023.
Note: We wanted to learn more about Sinergia's alleged negotiations with Aurora, so we asked Sinergia how many meetings they had with Aurora. Sinergia responded stating they don't disclose this information without a confidentiality agreement. We then asked to sign the confidentiality agreement, but Sinergia refused to send it to us.
We said that Sinergia took credit for getting BRF to end their use of gestation crates in new projects by 2023, but that BRF had already implemented a policy requiring this prior to the alleged commitment.
Sinergia responded stating that BRF has made two separate commitments related to gestation crate usage:
2014 Group Housing Commitment: A commitment to transition to group housing systems.
2023 Pre-Implantation Commitment: A commitment to use the pre-implantation system in new projects.
Sinergia states they were taking credit for the 2023 Pre-Implantation Commitment, not the 2014 Group Housing Commitment.
We did in fact assume that Sinergia was taking credit for the 2014 Group Housing Commitment. However, we were actually interpreting Sinergia's spreadsheet in the most favorable way possible for Sinergia.
In 2023 only ~5% of BRF's sows were in the pre-implantation system, meaning that the 2023 Pre-Implantation Commitment only impacted ~5% of BRF's sows in 2023.However, Sinergia incorrectly took credit for helping 100% of BRF's sows in 2023 through this commitment.
This unwarranted cedit is critical:
The BRF commitment is the basis for over half of the sows that Sinergia claims to have liberated from gestation crates in 2023. Because the number of sows impacted by the BRF commitment was substantially overstated (100% of BRF's sows helped in 2023 instead of ~5%), Sinergia's overall claims about liberating sows from gestation crates in 2023 are significantly inflated.
We said that ACE gave Sinergia credit for helping over 30 million female piglets through surgical castration commitments, which doesn't make sense since female piglets cannot be surgically castrated.
We also said Sinergia should have validated ACE's calculations.
Sinergia responded stating Sinergia accounted for female piglets not being surgically castrated, and that the impact metrics ACE calculated were correct.
Sinergia also stated they did validate ACE's calculations.
After our review, ACE reduced Sinergia's metric "Total number of piglets impacted for all years discounting for others collaboration" by over 20 million, and added a note stating the reduction was due to not properly accounting for the surgical castration of female piglets.
This contradicts Sinergia's response.
ACE has acknowledged that their impact calculations would be even lower if they corrected all of the problems we pointed out. However, ACE has decided they won't be making these corrections because the corrections "would not impact [their] decision to recommend Sinergia" and because "the changes could be quite involved."
We respectfully disagree with ACE's decision. In our view, the numbers should be corrected — and doing so would not be particularly difficult.
For example, Sinergia and ACE have both acknowledged that JBS committed to banning ear notching by 2027, not 2023. However, Sinergia is still being incorrectly credited for helping JBS pigs from 2023 to 2026 through this commitment.
Fixing this would require correcting just one cell in the spreadsheet, and could easily be done in minutes. Given this single error results in tens of millions of additional piglets being impacted (8,700,000 piglets per year from 2023 to 2026), the magnitude of this error is substantial — and leaving it uncorrected significantly inflates Sinergia's estimated impact. We believe it is worth the effort required to correct this issue, and the other issues we've pointed out.
We appreciate that Sinergia took the time to respond to our review. However, based on the available evidence, we continue to believe that Sinergia makes factually incorrect claims about helping millions of animals — ACE's reduction of Sinergia's impact metrics and acknowledgement of additional uncorrected issues prove this to be the case.
We also believe that Sinergia wrongly accused us of making errors that we didn't make. Still, our primary concern is that donors are being misled by the statements advertised by Sinergia.
References were last checked on April 16, 2025.
Vetted Causes Ear Notching Picture
Sinergia Ear Notching Picture 1
Sinergia Ear Notching Picture 2
Sinergia Validating Picture
Note: The estimated number of piglets impacted per year by the ear notching commitment is 8,700,000. Thus, Sinergia's "minor mistake" of using 2023 as a transition deadline instead of 2027 results in Sinergia receiving credit for helping millions of pigs who were not impacted.