JBS USA, the American subsidiary of the world's largest meat processing company, said Monday it had been hacked.

"JBS USA determined that it was the target of an organised cybersecurity attack, affecting some of the servers supporting its North American and Australian IT systems," the unit said in a statement.

The intrusion was detected Sunday, according to the statement.

The Brazil-based company said it had suspended all systems that were affected, notified the authorities and called in its IT professionals and third-party experts to deal with the hack.

It said its backup servers were not affected.

"The company is not aware of any evidence at this time that any customer, supplier or employee data has been compromised or misused as a result of the situation," JBS USA said.

"Resolution of the incident will take time, which may delay certain transactions with customers and suppliers," it added.

JBS is a sprawling meat supplier with operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe, Mexico, New Zealand and Britain.

Earlier this month, hackers attacked Colonial Pipeline, which transports nearly half of the gasoline and other fuel consumed on the US east coast, causing shortages and panic buying until the company paid the attackers a ransom of $4.4 million for its online systems to be freed.

 - AFP