Trust the requirement to maintain “social licence”

World Meat Congress Nov. 8, 2016

Ted Bilyea

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Trust: the requirement to maintain “social licence”

Breach of trust takes many forms: fraud

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Food safety breaches & meat recalls:becoming viewed as negligence not accidents

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Animal welfare: breaches undermine “Trust” -a lightening rod for the anti-meat movement

Responsible animal care & welfare:

“doing right by animals” now a U.N. principle

Continuous improvement:

science-driven & changing societal expectations

Effective self-regulation: codes of practice &

certification are essential and buffer anti-meat

campaigns

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Food fraud, food safety & animal welfare may pale againstgreater risks that could permanently undermine trust

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Global existential threats: infectious zoonotic diseases & antimicrobial resistance

• 75% of emerging diseases are zoonotic

• Increases in mortality from infectious disease- first since 19th century

• Antimicrobial resistance

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Source NASA Earth Observatory

Chile

U.S.A.

Permanently destroying trust on a global scale: GHGs, water depletion, water and soil pollution & biodiversity loss

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China

Europe

The greatest risk to the global meat industry is failure to see “Trust” as a burning platform.

If we can’t deal with the risks we can control what hope is there of maintaining “Trust” in the face of existential threats

Oxford University – “if unaddressed, environmental and public health expenses from increased animal products demand could be up to $1.6 trillion globally by 2050” • Their solution “a protein shake up”

filling the growing demand for meat protein with plant protein.

• Our solution should be to strengthen “Trust” by actions that are meaningful

How do we do that?

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“Trust” requires accountability –unlocks value in provenance, ethics, health & sustainability

Next generation DNA traceability linked to

International Bar Code of Lifein use by Canadian Food

Inspection Agency

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Trust requires risk control within the supply chainThe meat industry needs a global data base to track incidents of fraud, food safety and

animal welfare abuse

modeled on the US Pharmacopeial

Convention

Food Fraud Database and reference

centers

Potential to track & analyze incidents of

• Fraud

• Food Safety

• Animal Welfare

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Trust requires transparency Social media: industry’s worst nightmare?

Or, an asset to build trust & incent improvement?

• Trust demands authenticity, transparency.

• Social media exposes fraud, scandal & greenwash.

• Social media rewards accountability & good efforts; e.g. the Global Roundtable on Sustainable Beef initiative.

• The proliferation of company & country brands ranked for myriad trust measures are posted and retweeted stimulating a race to the top; e.g. World Ranking of Food Safety Performance gave top spot to Canada and Ireland.

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Source: Conference Board of Canada

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Trust is indivisible A path to retention of trust and maintaining social licence

1) Trust requires accountability & transparency

the case for real global traceability

2) Industry Governance : Food safety and animal welfare breaches of trust equate to negligence or worse. This would substantially improve with the creation of an open industry incident data base to provide transparency and choice to customers and consumers for risk mitigation

3) Social media diving a race to the top: Social media’s naming and shaming is a powerful tool driving change and can make efforts to raise the bar on health and sustainability profitable by rewarding a race to the top with rankings and certifications

4) Acknowledgement and mitigation of global threats: Existential global threats of zoonotic disease, antimicrobial resistance and destruction of biosystems are deadly to “Trust” and will cap or shrink the industry. With accountability and transparency in place intelligent industry redesign can substantially begin the mitigation of existential threats. An opportunity for society leadership role for the meat industry