How JBS USA is progressing toward sustainability goals

JBS USA has established a set of sustainability goals that the animal protein company wants to achieve by 2020, and the company’s director of sustainability reports that it is progressing nicely toward those goals.

Roy Graber Headshot
(Courtesy of JBS)
(Courtesy of JBS)

JBS USA has established a set of sustainability goals that the animal protein company wants to achieve by 2020, and the company’s director of sustainability reports that it is progressing nicely toward those goals.

Developing sustainability goals

Speaking at the Animal Agriculture Sustainability Summit at the 2019 International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE) on February 12, Dr. Kim Stackhouse, JBS USA director of sustainability, said that the company’s sustainability initiatives are relatively new, and the program was one that had to be built from scratch.

“If we’re going to have a sustainability program that works, let’s build one from the ground up,” she said of the company’s philosophy. “So that’s what we did.”

JBS USA’s current sustainability goals examine four categories: environment, team member health and safety, animal welfare, and supply chain. However, in order to develop goals of where the company wants to be, it first had to find out where it was at the present time.

 “We benchmarked every single one of our facilities, so more than 100 facilities, we benchmarked for 2013, 2014 and 2015,” Stackhouse explained.

“We ran incredible regression numbers to look at what every single plant could achieve to meet our targets.”

Jbs Kim Stackhouse

Dr. Kim Stackhouse, JBS USA director of sustainability (Roy Graber)

Goals for 2020

When JBS USA went to set its sustainability goals for 2020, it used figures from 2015 as the starting point, and set improvement goals to attain five years later. Those goals are:

Environment

  • Reduce water use by 10 percent
  • Reduce natural gas use by 20 percent
  • Reduce electric use by 12 percent
  • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent

Team member health and safety

Decrease severe incidents – defined as amputations, hospitalizations, vision loss, more than five days of lost time due to a safety-related incident or a fatality – by 10 percent annually

Animal welfare

Achieve 90 percent or better on the JBS USA animal health and welfare scorecard, which benchmarks more than 19 different criteria

Supply chain

Have 100 percent of the company’s manufacturing suppliers in compliance with the JBS USA Supplier Code of Business Ethics and Conduct

Progress toward goals

Stackhouse said JBS USA is still in the process of evaluating its progress toward 2020 sustainability goals in 2018, but in most areas, the company showed it moved in the right direction in 2017.

For that year, in terms of environmental sustainability, JBS USA saw:

  • Water use decline by 4.9 percent 
  • Use of electricity reduced by 7.75 percent 
  • Natural gas use reduced by 16.54 percent  
  • 15.62 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions

Stackhouse reported that severe incidents with team members had declined by 5.97 percent, but that fell short of the annual goal of a 10 percent reduction.

JBS USA has implemented a data collection system to begin tracking its performance according to the animal welfare scorecard, and it is in the process of implementing its Supplier code of Business Ethics and Conduct with all of its manufacturing suppliers.

While Stackhouse says there is still some progress to be made, she adds that it is good to have measurable goals and updates that can be provided to the company.

“These are competitive people,” she said. “If you can get this in front of them, they will do whatever it takes to meet these goals, in my experience.”

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