The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB) Scientific Advisory Council has launched the Beef Carbon Footprint Guideline, which seeks to provide sector-wide consistency in the calculation of the carbon footprint of beef cattle.
GRSB said that the guidelines support the “worldwide ambition” to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees by 2030. The guidelines, which were financed by the McDonald’s Corporation and DSM, set out “a suite of ambitious goals” on climate, land use and animal welfare.
The Roundtable said that it had noticed that across the sector, businesses and organisations globally were using different methodologies and data to measure their carbon impact – leading to inconsistencies. It said that “comparable and consistent measuring across companies, countries and continents was difficult.”
The new Beef Carbon Footprint Guideline has been developed based on UN FAO’s LEAP guidance to:
• Quantify emissions from cradle to farm gate or cradle to processing gate
• Allow monitoring of GHG emissions through time for a specific system
• Identify main drivers for GHG emissions in the beef cattle life cycle
• Allow comparisons within the context of the same study
• Complement the dairy sector’s LCA work, also based on FAO LEAP guideline.
Ensuring transparency
Ruaraidh Petre, executive director of the GRSB, said: “A key part of GRSB’s mission is to ensure transparency when it comes to evaluating and reporting key sustainability metrics. However, the global beef carbon footprint has, to date, been challenging to effectively track and report.
“Launching this new guideline will help to create consistency in the global beef sector. There is growing momentum in the industry to protect and nurture the earth’s natural resources and having a clearer carbon footprint guideline will allow us to do this better than ever before.”
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