The world’s biggest meat supplier has become the latest casualty of a cybersecurity attack, posing a fresh threat to global food security already rattled by the Covid-19 pandemic.

JBS SA shut its North American and Australian computer networks after an organized assault on Sunday on some of its servers, the company said by email. Without commenting on operations at its plants, JBS said the incident may delay certain transactions with customers and suppliers.

The attack sidelined two shifts and halted processing at one of Canada’s largest meatpacking plants, while the company canceled all beef and lamb kills across Australia, industry website Beef Central said. Some kill and fabrication shifts have also been canceled in the U.S., according to a union Facebook post.

Hackers now have the commodities industry in their crosshairs with the JBS attack coming just three weeks after the operator of the biggest U.S. gasoline pipeline was targeted. It’s also happened as the global meat industry battles lingering Covid-19 absenteeism after recovering from mass outbreaks last year that saw plants shut and supplies disrupted.

Canadian Facility

The cyber assault affected a Canadian beef plant in Brooks, Alberta, about 190 kilometers (118 miles) east of Calgary, on Monday, according to Scott Payne, spokesman for United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Union Local 401. The facility accounts for more than a quarter of the nation’s capacity, and according to a job ad, processes about 4,200 head of cattle a day.

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Finland is moving forward with a revolutionary solution for how to dispose of high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel from atomic reactors.

Among the greatest challenges of the nuclear era remains what to do with all the high-level nuclear waste produced by our existing fleet of nuclear reactors. The preferred method is deep geologic storage. In the U.S., tens of billions of dollars have been spent on proposals to place such nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain, Nevada, or within thick salt layers under Carlsbad, N.M. Yet due to the politics of NIMBY, the United States does not yet have a permanent storage plan.

Finland does. In early May the Finnish waste management company Posiva Oy, announced the start of excavation on their deep geologic nuclear waste repository for their spent nuclear fuel (SNF) at ONKALO.

The repository will be the first in the world to start final disposal of spent nuclear fuel.

The Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland has certified the process. Operation of the repository is expected to begin in 2023. The total cost estimate is about €2.6 billion ($3.4 billion).

This has been decades in coming. Their disposal program started in 1983 and they have two spent fuel storage sites in operation. Posiva Oy was set up 1995 to implement deep geological disposal.

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ExxonMobil just lost a huge boardroom battle.

At a shareholder meeting last week, 2 green-friendly directors — who will push for a lower carbon future — were voted onto the energy giant’s board of directors.

According to The Economist, it is “extremely rare” for a company of Exxon’s size to have even a single dissenting voice on the board (translation: things are going to change).

With climate change concerns…

… more pressing than ever, Big Oil is facing pressure from all angles (governments, consumers) to clean up their energy production.

The most aggressive moves have come from green-friendly Europe:

• BP has plans to reduce the carbon intensity of its products by 50% in the next 3 decades
• Shell will be carbon neutral by mid-century

While ExxonMobil has carbon-reduction plans in place, critics want more. To wit: The company’s current spending plan calls for $3B on green projects in the next 5 years (vs. ~$100B for its other projects).

A defeat has been years in the making

In 2013, ExxonMobil was the world’s largest company. Today, the company’s value has fallen ~40% from its peak and — last year — it recorded a $22B loss due to the pandemic.

A small activist hedge fund named Engine No. 1 started agitating for change in December.

It was backed by 2 massive California pension funds (CalPERS, CalSTRS). While they own <1% of ExxonMobil, the funds’ combined $700B of assets make them very influential, per The Economist.

To be carbon neutral by 2050…

… the world must stop all new oil and gas projects, according to a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) released in mid-May.

While there is much work to do, ExxonMobil’s stunning board defeat is one step toward reaching that goal.