The world’s biggest meat company, JBS, faces a landmark legal challenge to disclose how its $6bn (£4.5bn) global expansion plan is compatible with responsibilities to the climate, nature and human rights. Courts in the Netherlands, where JBS is headquartered, will assess the petition filed by Greenpeace for information on whether the company is compliant with Dutch laws on “duty of care” as well as its own publicly stated commitments. Lawyers said the case opened a new frontier in the fight against climate change, potentially creating a precedent for legal challenges against the agriculture sector, which is the biggest cause of deforestation and a major source of methane emissions.

“The primary objective is to challenge JBS’s business model and expansion model,” said Richard Brown, legal counsel at Greenpeace International. “We have a suspicion that they’re flying blind and not pulling together the information they need to understand the impacts.” He said the request for information is a preliminary stage towards filing formal litigation against the multinational meat company. Until now similar lawsuits have only been filed against fossil fuel companies.

Last month, a Paris court ruled that the French oil company TotalEnergies must disclose the climate risks linked to emissions from its oil and gas products, and set out plans to address them in a case brought by NGOs and the city of Paris, but did not order specific measures such as limiting overseas exploration and production. In the Netherlands, Shell is being challenged in The Hague by environmental groups Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands) and Friends of the Earth to reduce the company’s carbon dioxide output by 45% by 2030 in line with the Paris climate agreement. A final ruling is expected in early 2027.

At the centre of the petition against JBS is a perceived lack of transparency over its massive expansion plans in Nigeria. In the coming years, the meat company plans to invest $2.5bn in six giant meat-processing plants that are seen as a bridgehead to the fast-growing African market. Civil society groups say there is scant information about whether JBS has assessed the social and environmental consequences of this plan, which would threaten smallholder farmers, domestic food security, land-use priorities, as well as locking in huge quantities of methane emissions.

Methane is one of the most climate-destabilising greenhouse gases. “This is the biggest agriculture investment that I have heard of in Nigeria’s history but there have been few details and no consultation for civil society,” said Elujulo Opeyemi, the spokesperson for Youth in Agroecology and Restoration Network. “The information is not there.

We want the Nigerian government to take a pause until we can make a concrete cost-benefit analysis. This investment will only be worthwhile if it is good for the people and planet. Otherwise it will just create more problems.” To illustrate the risks, he said the Niger state government has already promised 1.2m hectares to JBS.

JBS, which was founded in Brazil in 1953, moved its headquarters to the Netherlands last year as part of its strategy to list on the New York Stock Exchange.