Sustainable beef push at McDonald's in Canada

In its announcement, McDonald’s Canada said the initiative would begin with its Angus beef products but it was not made clear whether that would require all of the suppliers who underpin its Angus program to become certified sustainable. 

The statement simply said that McDonald’s customers will soon see a new CRSB (Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef) logo alongside the Angus line-up on the menu.

That kind of suggests that customers will be able to choose between a non-breed-specific beef burger, an Angus beef burger and CRSB Angus beef burger. That would seem a touch confusing and there is also the issue of timeframe and rate of uptake of certification by the ranchers so there has to be a bit more to the story than meets the eye. The answer seems to lie with a brief dot-point facts statement at the end of a very lengthy media announcement.

It said, “Sustainability claims will be awarded based on a minimum of 30 per cent of the supply chain’s beef originating from CRSB-certified farms and ranches.”

That seems to say that provided 30pc of supply can demonstrate it meets the certification criteria, it is okay to apply the sustainability claim to the entire product line-up.

With the power that the concept of sustainability carries in the current social climate, it would seem to be a mighty good deal to have your product tagged with the official sustainability logo when 70pc of it does not have to demonstrate that it meets the required criteria. Mighty Angus indeed.

WHILE the Canadians have seen fit to go down the path of audit-based certification in their approach to sustainability in beef production and processing, Australia’s Beef Sustainability Framework specifically does not provide an accreditation or certification system. That presumably would make it difficult for retailers and food service operators in Australia to tie marketing programs such as the McDonald’s Canada initiative described above to the Sustainability Framework here. Instead, it would seem that industry stakeholders in Australia will benefit from a Framework that defines sustainable beef production and tracks performance annually via a series of indicators.

This process of aligning environmental, welfare, social and economic practices with best evidence and community expectations while at the same time growing in profitability, will help ensure continued access to markets and capital for Australian beef businesses.

That is the formal explanation set out in the Australian Beef Sustainability Annual Update 2018 which was released during Beef Week at Rockhampton in May this year.

For consumers in Australia, it seems the Annual Update report itself is intended as proof positive that the beef they are buying is derived from a sustainable and thriving beef industry committed to better social, animal welfare, environmental and economic outcomes.

But the question that arises out of the Australian approach is who or what is going to constantly reinforce the good-practice message to consumers in between Annual Update reports in the absence of a certification logo or similar device linking product to practice?

The countervailing messages that get regular and prominent attention in the media are that cattle producers are a bunch of environmental vandals when it comes to tree clearing and put profit before animal welfare in their support of live export.

Red Meat Advisory Council (RMAC), one of the initiators of the Sustainability Framework understands the nature of the challenge.

Referencing the release of the Update Report, independent Chair, Don Mackay said, “We must clearly communicate how we as an industry manage issues that our customers and stakeholders are interested in and concerned about.”

“We may never satisfy an environmental or anti-animal-industry activist agenda, but we must do better for our own businesses and our customers and Australian voters. Our industry depends on it to continue to live up to our claims we are producing sustainable Australian beef.”

EASTERN states recorded a further drop in kill numbers last week confirming the expected tighter supply conditions as we move further into the third quarter.

MLA’s weekly slaughter report had the kill at 141,709 head, down from 149,000 just three weeks earlier.

New South Wales and Victoria recorded overall falls of 6pc and 3pc respectively with the biggest proportion of the reduction occurring in females. The NSW female kill was back by 18pc.

Good rain in Victoria and parts of southern NSW appears to have put the brakes on liquidation of females that was occurring in those areas. In contrast the Queensland female kill jumped 8pc which had the effect of holding overall numbers steady at the 78,000 average of the last 9 weeks. One southern Queensland processor I spoke to earlier in the week put the jump in Queensland’s female numbers down to a combination of recent price rises and a descent into winter proper with cold weather and big frosts.

His thoughts were that anyone without oats will probably move cattle with any condition on them in the next couple of weeks or risk them slipping back into store condition and being faced with holding them over until later this year or early next year.

Over-the-hooks prices meanwhile remain unchanged with 4-tooth ox at 490c/kg and heavy cow at 425. Interestingly the gap between ox and cow price is starting to show signs of narrowing with saleyards recording some strong gains for cows.

This trend is particularly evident in the south with the fewer numbers now on offer there.

Wagga on Monday hit 262c/kg taking the average for the score 4 heavyweights to 247 (around 480c/kg DW).

The trend has carried to Queensland with Toowoomba on Monday 10-11c dearer at a 231c/kg average for a small sample of heavyweights.