Beef roundtable eyes improvements | Farmtario

Glacier FarmMedia – The Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef has launched online public consultations on proposed changes to its sustainability standards.

This follows consultation with stakeholders, as the CRSB ends its first five years of operation.

Kristine Tapley, chair of the CRSB’s certified sustainable beef framework committee, said every indicator in the standards for both beef production and primary processing have been examined with a view to updating and improving them, along with identifying gaps.

Why it matters: The roundtable is reviewing its sustainabilty framework after five years in operation.

The standards are used when operations are audited.

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Tapley said a five-year review is part of the organization’s plan.

“Part of the foundation of the CRSB is certainly continuous improvement and so we wanted to build that into the bones of the framework itself to make sure we are keeping up with the industry and on point,” she said.

Tapley said it’s important particularly as a new organization to make sure it is strengthening the standards.
Those who go to the consultation page will see a shift in language.

“At the beginning there was a lot of language around awareness and bringing sustainability out into the industry,” she said.

Now, the tone is changed to reflect the intention to move toward measuring and demonstrating progress toward the indicator goals, she said.

“We also really tried to focus on strengthening the indicators that aligned with the Canadian beef industry goals for 2030,” said Tapley. “There are some things like greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration that align in both the production and the processing standards.”

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Another would be the goal to maintain perennial cover.

Tapley said the framework committee is working to maintain a balance so that people are willing and able to meet the certification requirements.

The 60-day comment period is underway and runs until Dec. 2. There are two separate consultations for production and processing.

“It is an interesting process in that you can’t just go on and pick holes. For NSF to accept the submission there needs to be a suggested change or a solution provided, which is really constructive, and I think going to be helpful for our process,” she said.
NSF is the third-party certifier.

The consultation is the last step in the review process and the results should be released in March.

“I feel like the first phase was really to kind of build the ship and create something. We have grown so much in that first five years and accomplished so much that other standards take a long time to reach,” she said. “Now with this first review let’s sail the ship.”

– This article was originally published at The Western Producer.