Laundering and evasion in response to antislavery policies in Brazil’s cattle sector

Modern slavery remains pervasive across many economic sectors. Progress toward eradicating it has been partially hindered by a lack of tested, comprehensive policy responses. Using data on millions of cattle transactions in Brazil, we evaluated how ranchers changed their selling behavior after being added to the “Dirty List,” a public registry that names and shames employers found to use modern slavery. Dirty Listed ranchers significantly reduced direct sales to slaughterhouses that signed sustainable supply chain commitments but evaded sanctions by laundering cattle through compliant intermediaries or selling to nonsignatory slaughterhouses. These responses weakened the financial cost of listing to ranchers, and likely allowed beef and leather linked to modern slave labor to enter international supply chains. Our findings highlight the limits of downstream enforcement and underscore the need to monitor upstream suppliers to ensure slavery-free supply chains.