Source: Bob Moser, MEATINGPLACE, 11/4/14

After announcing on Monday its new global principles and criteria for sustainable beef production, the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB) plans to roll out detailed advice on how producers can meet each criteria point by the first quarter of 2015, executive director Ruaraidh Petre told Meatingplace.

The GRSB will also begin helping national and regional beef roundtables as soon as next year to develop their own standards for sustainable beef, which was the ultimate goal that motivated organizers to write the criteria in a broad fashion for individual markets to build off of.

“We deliberately avoided specifics of what we measure and the means of verification, knowing that it will vary widely from market to market, and must be set at a national or local level,” said Petre from the sidelines of the Global Conference on Sustainable Beef in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

National-level roundtable groups are already established in Canada, Colombia and Mexico, while Brazil's Grupo de Trabalho da Pecuaria Sustentavel (GTPS) is the most advanced of any worldwide, and is already working with producers in multiple states, Petre said.

“Other countries with a group or association in development but not fully formed yet include Argentina, Paraguay, the United States, the European Union and Australia,” he said. “So there are many making progress, and I expect more to come up in the next few years. GRSB can support other countries, certainly, to get started down this path.”

CORPORATE ADOPTION
Companies don't have to wait for the countries in which they operate to develop similar roundtables and sustainability mandates, and instead can adopt the GRSB principles as their own.

Ed Delate, vice president for corporate social responsibility at Marfrig Global Foods' Keystone Foods, said the standards and criteria could be used by a firm like Marfrig and passed down through its supply chain.

For McDonald's – which in January announced it will begin using verified sustainable beef for at least 20 percent of its hamburgers beginning in 2016 – the time is now to push for change in the industry, said Michele Banik-Rake, director of sustainability.

“We took that stance in January because we've always felt that the beef industry is quite sustainable, except for a few gaps, and we think it's time to be able to show and measure that,” she said.

SPECIFICS ARE HIT AND MISS
Across the five categories dubbed “Principles” by the GRSB, up to nine criteria were listed under each that future supporters will have to adhere by. The language of many criteria points was left purposefully vague, with further specifics to come via “Guidance” reports beginning in the first quarter of next year.

Under Principle 1, “Natural Resources,” criteria like “improve air quality” and “minimization of greenhouse gas emissions” were two that were written broadly to allow national groups to specify standards that producers in their markets could realistically meet, said Fawn Jackson, manager of environment and sustainability with the Canadian Cattlemen's Association.

With Principle 2, “People & The Community,” the well-established United Nations' Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights was deemed the specific standard the industry should follow, while with Principle 3, “Animal Health & Welfare,” the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and its five freedoms guidance was a key base for the eight criteria.

Despite heated debate and thousands of public comments earlier this year on including standards on specific practices like antibiotics use, the GRSB opted to avoid “picking winners and losers,” and instead plans to issue future guidance specifics on the topic, said Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, vice president at Cargill Value Added Meats Foodservice. 

“We know that antibiotics is a critical issue for human health, but we wanted to keep this out of the criteria and allow for national-level specificity,” she said.

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