The primary purpose of the trip was to join a group led by several dairy industry federations: US Dairy Export Council, National Milk Producers Federation, FEPALE (the Pan American Milk Producers Federation) together with FARM (the Mercosur Federation of Rural Associations). We heard from senior figures from throughout the region including the Director of IICA, Manuel Otero and Vice Minister Marcelo Gonzalez from Paraguay.
They were calling for the livestock sector from South Americas to be present at all international environmental negotiations to demonstrate its progress towards greater sustainability, and its position as part of the solution to the climate crisis. It was a privilege for me to be able to present our network of Roundtables as an example of collaboration and cooperation between many countries.
The output of the meeting was an agreement by the organisations present to commit to a set of sustainability principles and to showcase the work that is already taking place in the region during multilateral meetings. We hope that this can bring some of the Rural Associations closer to national roundtables, as FARM members are still very influential in their respective countries.
From Buenos Aires I went on and made a brief but fruitful visit to Uruguay. I was entirely supported in this trip by Sebastian Olaso from Sol Dorado, to whom I am very grateful! We first met LSQA, whose membership application to GRSB was approved by the board last week. LSQA are a certification association headquartered in Uruguay and working in 41 countries, providing certification services in the fields of Social Accountability, Good Agricultural Practices and GHG inventory standards. They have developed a GHG verification program for primary production and verify GHG inventory for beef producers and for the meat industry.
We then met with the Conrado Feber, President, and senior leaders of INAC, the national meat institute of Uruguay, to discuss their potential involvement in the establishment of a national roundtable. INAC led the field, certainly for Mercosur, when they developed the certified natural Uruguayan system, including USDA process verification. This has meant that Uruguay has been able to demonstrate full chain traceability since 2008.
Additionally the program allows no hormones, sub therapeutic antibiotics or animal proteins in feed, and is an open range, majority grassfed (minimum 80%) system. While that has been successful for Uruguay, with the advent of increasing legislation from markets including Europe, it is becoming increasingly important for Uruguay to ally with other countries on the international stage and be seen to align with the roundtable network.
Following INAC, we visited INIA, the National Agricultural and Livestock Research Institute, where we met with Ing Ag Jose Bonica, President (and well known Hereford Breeder), and Dr. Walter Baethgen, Vice President. It was clear that INIA sees the value of interacting with a global community of likeminded organisations, and I hope that they will be able to join GRSB in the future. My final meeting in Montevideo was with Luis Carrau and team from the Angus Association of Uruguay, who joined GRSB recently.
The Angus breed has seen tremendous growth in Uruguay over the past decade and by now the majority of beef sires in the country are Angus. This shows the progressive nature of the breed association and their willingness to engage with the market in terms of eating quality, but also the many other attributes to make a commercially successful breed, including the introduction of breeding values for sustainability attributes.
This week I am in the US for the USRSB meeting where we will be discussing the collaboration between roundtables amongst other things, and taking a tour of facilities in Idaho.
