Friday, June 3, 2016

Sustainable beef pilot project finished

A pilot project to determine whether Canadians can produce beef to McDonalds Restaurants chain standards for sustainability has concluded after two years.

Now, the pilot results are in the hands of the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, an initiative working towards similar goals locally. It will now create a verification framework based on the pilot to be finalized by late 2017.

Canada could become the first nation in the world to be able to make a “sustainable beef” claim and that would likely boost exports which already take 60 per cent of Canadian production.

Canadian farmers, most of them in Alberta and Saskatchewan, supply McDonald’s so it can deliver on its promise to use only Canadian-produced beef.

Fawn Jackson, executive director of the Canadian roundtable, said McDonald's helped bring the conversation about sustainability to the mainstream. The roundtable had recently formed when the fast-food chain first approached it in 2014.

"In Canada, we had a number of the different, what I'll call puzzle pieces, to sustainability. But the pilot project has really helped put those puzzle pieces together," Jackson said.


World Wildlife Fund U.S. is one of the founding members of the global roundtable, and its beef director Tim Hardman said beef production impacts more natural resources than any other animal that's raised for food.