One of GRSB’s founding principles is that we work collaboratively on sustainability, using a scientific basis and that the work we do is pre-competitive.
That last term is particularly important, because it means that GRSB members recognise and have committed to the fact that making the beef industry more sustainable is an imperative, not an option.
So what does pre-competitive mean, and how does it relate to sustainability? Simply put, pre-competitive refers to actions that companies and partners they work with, that are aimed at systemic change and which are not aimed at creating a competitive advantage.
Improving the sustainability of beef production across the board benefits the whole industry, and is in my opinion an imperative. If we do not make it happen together we can expect increasing levels of regulation that will impose it. In that sense pre-competitive can also mean proactive and pre-emptive.
Where supply chains source from the same pool of producers, and there is a need for sustainability work to take place with those producers, it is clearly the interests of both producers and those further up the supply chain to work on sustainability together. It is not in the interests of a primary producer to get locked into a supply chain with only one buyer. They need to be able to access the whole market.
It is also inefficient for buyers further up the supply chain to be individually investing in areas where collaboration would share costs and result in a general improvement in sustainability across the industry, allowing them to source from the whole supply base and not just a small subset of it.
Sustainability today is a cost of doing business, and it is far more efficient to share that cost than to try and go it alone. Large corporations around the world, including those that are members of GRSB, have made numerous commitments to improving sustainability. In the case of the beef industry, the majority of these include climate commitments that align very well with GRSB’s own climate goal of a 30% reduction of emissions intensity by 2030 on a pathway to climate neutrality. They also include commitments to biodiversity and to animal welfare.
When GRSB set our Global Goals, and our members voted overwhelmingly to adopt them as goals for the whole beef industry, we made it clear that these are pre-competitive.
That is to say, it is in all of our interests to make sure that we reach these targets together as soon as possible. These are now expectations that the world has of us and of our members.
We recognise that the pace of change in different places is not always the same. This reflects another founding principle of GRSB, continuous improvement. Wherever we are today, we can be better tomorrow.
A reduction of 30% in emissions intensity is actually simpler to achieve in a supply base that is only just starting on improvements than it is in one that has been working on efficiency for decades, and in either case it is far simpler to achieve when the whole industry is working on the improvements together, than when only a small subset of producers are involved.
I remember many years ago asking Cameron Bruett when he was GRSB president, why on earth would we want to offer a meat case in which consumers were given the choice between sustainable meat and the other, putatively un-sustainable meat? Consumers have the right to expect that the products we sell them are at the very least, sustainably and responsibly produced, just as they do with food safety.
This is why it is clearly an area in which pre-competitive partnerships are the most efficient way of meeting our shared goals.
Sharing knowledge, data and experience helps producers and companies learn more quickly what works in different environments and contexts, accelerating the benefits of innovation. Avoiding locking producers into segregated or siloed supply chains is undoubtedly better for the producer, but is also better for companies when solutions work across the board and recognise the imperative for systemic change and flexible sourcing.
Industry wide collaboration results in clear and easily communicable frameworks for reporting. Without such frameworks, we know that government regulation will step in and impose standards.
Collaborating as an industry means that we are proactive and can offer solutions to governments, regulators and international organisations for policy guidance, rather than being reactive and defensive.
We can take the lessons we learn together to the world, to impact meaningfully in countries where availability of high quality food is not a given, where even the basics such as food safety, or of animal health and husbandry may not be guaranteed, where zoonotic diseases are a challenge, and where we can expect the biggest impact on global sustainability figures.
Remember that 66% of large ruminants are in Africa and Asia. Certifying a niche supply chain in a wealthy country will not change global cattle emissions intensity by even 1%. Don’t be tricked into thinking that there is a niche for sustainable beef and the rest can remain unchanged; this industry needs to move the bottom, not capture the top.
