How the meat industry can tackle the sustainability challenge

This video features Cameron Bruett, the Chief Sustainability Officer from JBS USA. He was part of a roundtable discussion on sustainability, which included talks about what is sustainability, how do you define sustainability and who should be defining sustainability for the meat industry. The conclusion was that while it is impossible to define what sustainability is, it is important that the industry takes a lead in deciding what it is and what it is not, or else outside forces will be doing for the industry. Here is more of what Cameron had to say:

Cameron Bruett: [The thought that] large corporations cannot be sustainable is in fact inherently flawed. Anything you can do to improve today what you did yesterday and make improvements for the future makes you sustainable. Sustainability is merely a journey of continuous improvement. So anything that allows us to be more efficient, to do more with less, to produce things in a manner to require less natural resources, less inputs is a good thing. Why? Because we have an incredible challenge before us when it comes to attempting to feed all the mouths that are going to be a part of our global population shortly. The estimates are that by 2050, we could have nearly 10 billion people on the planet Earth. In order to feed all those people, the systems that we are using today will not be sufficient. We are going to have to improve. We are going to have to embrace technology and innovation in order to feed all these people. That means agriculture intensification. That means adopting new technologies. That means being as efficient as humanly possible. Large corporations can bring scale. They can bring resources. They can bring innovations to these challenges in a way no one else can. That’s not to say any one size is going to have the answer to all these problems. We are going to need everyone to put their shoulders into this issue and come up with unique solutions to help us tackle this challenge for large corporations, for small family businesses and everybody in between. We are all going to have to grow together to move this boat on a journey to success.

You must login or register in order to post a comment.

The Meat Industry Hall of Fame was created in 2009 to enshrine the leaders and legends whose visions, skills, and dedication have shaped and sustained the meat and poultry industries.

This new annual reception will celebrate the Meat Industry Hall of Fame Class of 2023 inductees in person during the AAMP American Convention of Meat Processors & Suppliers’ Exhibition in Omaha, Nebraska.