Simplifying Meat Industry Reporting

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Each year, the Meat Institute invites its Packer Processor members to take part in a member-led, member-driven reporting process.
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The process is aimed at tracking what's working and improving meat and poultry production.
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For 2026, that reporting framework has been updated specifically for the needs of a modern and complex supply chain.
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Welcome to Feedstuffs in Focus, our podcast, taking a look at the big issues affecting the livestock, poultry, grain, and animal feed industries.
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I'm your host, Sarah Muirhead.
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This episode of Feedstuffs in Focus is sponsored by United Animal Health, a leader in animal health and nutrition.
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You can learn more about United Animal Health and how they're working to advance animal science worldwide by visiting their website at unitedanh.com.
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Joining us to discuss the recent changes in the Meat Institute reporting is Christy Block, lead for the Meat Institute's reporting strategy.
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Christy, the Meat Institute has revamped its annual reporting framework with the goal of reducing complexity for companies and suppliers while creating more consistent, comparable data that better meets customer and stakeholder expectations.
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Talk with us about how the reporting framework initially came to be, what is its history, and what's its kind of overall purpose.
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Thanks, Sarah.
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The Meat Institute reporting framework came to be in about 2017, 2019.
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The board of directors of the Meat Institute was looking how do we be more proactive as an industry?
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And what came out of that was the protein pack, People, Animals, and Climate of Tomorrow.
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It's this strategic engagement effort to gather data from every sector of the animal ag supply chain and tell the great story that each sector is doing to continuously improve in the areas of people, animals, and climate.
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So to contribute to that, we have developed the Meat Institute reporting framework.
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And this is really for the meat sector to tell its story as it relates to animal welfare, food safety, environment, and what they're doing to continuously improve their businesses and that of the supply chain.
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So as we mentioned here at the in the open, it's uh been recently updated.
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So why is it time for an update and what changes have been made to the to the reporting?
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Yeah, we kicked off reporting in 2022.
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So we're four years into the process.
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Um, and through that, I think like a lot of initial survey mechanisms, we learned everybody has a lot of questions initially.
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And so there was about 500 questions in those five different focus areas.
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And after reporting on that for four years, we relooked at those questions that we were asking.
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And so we had subject matter experts of each focus area look at their questions and say, what's really driving the sector forward in this space?
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And then we also looked at supplier questions or customer questions of the meat companies.
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And from that analysis, we reduced the total number of questions down to about 50 that were being asked.
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And so the goal is with these 50, it's a combination of sector-specific questions that the meat companies really want to use internally to drive their businesses forward and that of the sector, but also create a comprehensive framework that allows them to do less customer supplier survey requests.
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So creating that one-step mechanism that can fit most of the questions that their customers in the supply chain are asking.
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So refining it a bit and making it uh giving it a little more value as well, it sounds like for those that are involved in it.
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Now, are there various topics or categories that companies can choose to report on, or do they have to do the all the questions?
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How does how does that work?
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And if there are specific areas, what are those areas?
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Yeah, so all of it is voluntary.
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Uh every meat company has the option to provide data in all of the focus areas, or just select those focus areas that are most important to them.
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So if you're a smaller size company and maybe you're just focusing on animal welfare, food safety, and worker safety, that's always a great three subjects to start on.
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Um, if you're more robust or you're you're looking to how else I can improve and I'm able to take on some of that capacity, because we know resources are always strained in businesses.
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Uh, maybe you choose to report on some labor metrics, some environmental metrics that get into like water and waste, um, or some sustainability metrics.
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And when I say sustainability, I'm really talking about like greenhouse gas accounting metrics.
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And from those results, the Meat Institute gets aggregated results, and our committees are able to work on what are the new education, what's the tools that we really need to assist in driving the sector forward?
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Do you find that any specific sector has more value?
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I mean, are there how do you advise companies that want to be involved?
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Are you like you really should start?
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You mentioned I know initial three.
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Um, do you talk to the companies and then say these are probably where you need to be or where you want to be?
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Is it a kind of a consulting process as companies sign up to be part of this?
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I would say it has been.
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I don't know if that was the initial goal of it.
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Um, I do always kind of suggest the food safety, worker safety as an initial, get started, get familiar with it.
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Partly because as an industry, we're just really familiar with our food safety and our worker safety programs.
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They're very regulated.
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Um the focus area for us that's been the newest, and I think has been really instrumental in helping the industry understand that space is the sustainability metrics.
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Um, if any of you are following the greenhouse gas protocol or science-based target initiative, there's always these new papers coming out of how do we inform, how do we get to these accounting protocols for business, and they continue to change almost every year, it seems like.
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So it's been a great learning process to bring a committee that has aggregated results around those specific questions and kind of streamline them for the industry.
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Because maybe you have the capacity as a company to really dive into that and have a team of five people working on that compared to maybe a smaller company that's like, I'm also handling environmental metrics, um, dealing with waste compliance at my local, local level.
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Like, I don't have all the time to do this, but I know I need to do that.
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So, can I come to that resource that the industry has set up for me to make it simpler to also participate in this space?
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So, what benefit do participating companies get from reporting?
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Uh, the biggest benefit that they get as a company themselves is this year we moved to establishment level data, and that was a direct request from many of the meat companies.
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So they're looking to get that um in one dashboard, looking at all of their facilities that are under their domain.
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Um, and they're able then to compare like, is each of my facility meeting these metrics that we've determined as an industry or as a company that are really important to us.
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So I think that's the first one is just getting some um streamlined data back to them in one format, in one place.
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Um, and then the other benefit I think is being able to have these broader uh industry conversations through the committee meetings of what's the next step on that?
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Because many times once you're meeting that metric, you're kind of like, okay, now what's what's the next continuous improvement I can do to keep driving this forward?
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What about verification audit system?
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Is there something that's in place that ensures that those that are reporting are are following certain certain standards, best practices?
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All of our metric questions are set up around standards and best practices.
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So if there's a recognized standard or a recognized best practice in the US or in Canada, we have a lot of the Canadian equivalent for like the OSHA standards in that.
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Um, it's kind of a resource hub, really.
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So you're able to look at that directly.
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And then the question is asking you specific to that regulation, that standard, that best practice.
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Um, within the new reporting framework, if there's a question on an audit this year, you're able to upload your audit.
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So if you passed or failed that audit and you want at the end of the reporting year to share that data if you so choose with your supplier to sort of have that verification of yes, I passed the audit, and here's my proof of concept that I did, um, they're able to do that this year.
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So we've built that in where we're able to uh on the reporting data side too, we have um utilized the back-end coding technology to make sure you never over-report.
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We can't ever help with under-reporting if that accidentally happens.
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We do have steps in place where there's another uh level within the company that's called kind of that administrator verifier.
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And so they're able to look at all the data submitted and give that final check before signing off on it as a company.
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However, there under-reporting could still happen, but we have reduced the capacity for over-reporting.
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I know you've been doing it for a few years, the reporting for a few years, but is there is there like a long-term goal or an objective for this annual process?
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Yeah, uh I think the long-term goal now that we've moved to this simplified framework is really to look at some trends over time.
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So it's going to take a couple more years, uh, but we're looking to see how does this change as the companies have progressed over the next three to four years, really kind of looking at 2030 and some industry targets that we have as a sector.
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Uh, also, these targets align with many of the roundtables.
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So the US round table for sustainable beef, we've tried to align our targets as much as possible, or the US round table for sustainable poultry and egg.
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So, really bringing in at the packer processor level what's the alignment for this sector to keep driving progress through that animal ag supply chain, and then being able to strategically engage that story where we need to and say, this is what we've done, and this is where we're going to continue to progress utilizing those subject matter experts, those committee meetings to make new tools and education available and help everyone that's participating.
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If a company wants to know more about the reporting or wants to be involved in it, where should they go to get information?
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The easiest way to get an initial draft of what is reporting, what might this look like for me and my company, is to go to meatinstitute.org slash reporting.
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Uh, we have all those videos and resources available right there.
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You can look through all of the metrics that companies can choose to answer.
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And if that is too complicated, you can always just reach out to me, Christy Block, uh kblock at meatinstitute.org.
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I'm very happy to help facilitate any questions you have or run you through a quick tutorial.
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Any final thoughts to leave our audience with today?
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We're really excited about this new reporting framework.
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Um, we're really hoping that the customer supplier industry adopts it as that one-stop shop for the for the meat sector to answer their supplier questions.
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Um so hopefully we continue to work with you and you find it useful too, in that we're always talking about the same data the same way, the same operational procedures the same way, and that streamlined concept can make everybody continue to move faster, but also have really good data at their fingertips.
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Having good data always important.
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Thank you so much, Christy, for joining us here today.
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Thank you.
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Our thanks to Christy Block of the Meat Institute for joining us here today.
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This episode of Feedstuffs in Focus is sponsored by United Animal Health, a leader in animal health and nutrition.
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You can learn more about United Animal Health and how they're working to advance animal science worldwide by visiting their website at unitedanh.com.
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I'm Sarah Muirhead, and you've been listening to Feedstuffs in Focus.
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If you would like to hear more conversations about some of the big issues affecting the livestock, poultry, grain, and animal feed industries, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast channel.
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Until next time, have a great day and thank you for listening.