Friday, March 29, 2024

Beef now on sustainable table

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New Zealand beef industry participants have somewhat belatedly joined the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.
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The announcement was made in Christchurch by Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor at a meeting of industry leaders with visiting Rountable members.

The NZ roundtable will work with other countries on initiatives to encourage and promote sustainable beef production.

GRSB membership for NZ had a long gestation period, some eight years after the formation of the Global Roundtable and five years after Australia joined.

Perhaps that was because of NZ’s lighter-footprint, grass-fed production system in contrast to the higher supplementary feeding levels and cattle penning systems elsewhere.

The recent activity flows from the requirements of overseas customers like the McDonald’s restaurant chain for traceability and sustainability, to which our meat processors and exporters are reacting.

The GRSB was formerly considered a farmer-focused organisation but now companies see the need to have good sustainability credentials, one NZ meat industry source said.

The companies run farm assurance programmes to be linked in future to zero carbon, water quality and nutrient management requirements.

“The momentum has built up and our GRSB participation is very much driven by the commercial interests.”

The founding participants include Anzco, Beef + Lamb, Greenlea Premier Meats, Fonterra, McDonald’s, Silver Fern Farms, World Wide Fund for Nature and some farmers.

The Meat Industry Association is the secretariat and Silver Fern’s communications director Justin Courtney has been steering committee chairman since 2017.

NZRSB will commission and issue reports on the NZ beef industry, he said.

Initial work on sustainability materiality with the Red Meat Profit Partnership helped determine this country’s issues, as ranked by stakeholders.

Chief among them are animal welfare and ethics, on-farm environmental management, water quality and use, transparency, measurement and verification, industry leadership and vision.

Further work will develop a framework that lays out measures against standards, identify the gaps and make a benchmark report to the community. 

The GRSB’s mission is to advance continuous improvement in sustainability of the global beef value chain through leadership, science, multi-stakeholder engagement and collaboration. 

The aim is to ensure beef production is economically viable, socially responsible and environmentally sound.

It is not about certification, GRSB executive director Ruaraidh Petre said.

Greenlea managing director Tony Egan said NZ has a proud history of pastoral farming built around extensive, low-impact, grassland grazing for cattle.

“This legacy stands our farmers in good stead as the world searches for sustainably produced, nutritious food.

“The role of the NZRSB is to pull activity together on behalf of the industry, listen better to our community voices and their views on our beef production and share knowledge.”

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