The ransom was paid after most of the company's facilities had come back online, JBS said.
"This was a very difficult decision to make for our company and for me personally," said Andre Nogueira, CEO of JBS USA, in the statement. "However, we felt this decision had to be made to prevent any potential risk for our customers."
The cyberattack
affected servers supporting JBS's IT systems in North America and Australia. The US government has attributed the ransomware attack to REvil, a criminal gang believed to be based in Russia or Eastern Europe.
"Preliminary investigation results confirm that no company, customer or employee data was compromised," JBS said in Wednesday's statement.
JBS USA is part of
JBS Foods, which it says is one of the world's largest food companies. It has operations in 15 countries and has customers in about 100 countries,
according to its website. Its
brands include Pilgrim's, Great Southern and Aberdeen Black.