More than 50 key stakeholders from across the Australian sheep and wool industry met in Melbourne last week for the inaugural meeting of the Sheep Sustainability Framework (SSF) Consultative Committee.
The meeting included a blend of producers and representatives of Sheep Producers Australia, WoolProducers Australia, Meat & Livestock Australia, Australian Wool Innovation, state farming organisations, Animal Health Australia and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (trade and market access, traceability), as well as businesses in the processing, finance and retail sectors including AWEX, Endeavour Wool Exports, Thomas Foods International, Gundagai Meats, Australian Lamb Company, Coles, NAB and Rabobank.
SSF Sustainability Steering Group Chair Dr Scott Williams said the Consultative Committee meeting provided an important forum to share the latest developments of the framework, seek feedback from industry and collect valuable insights to inform future priorities and improvement.
“The SSF was launched in early 2021 as the first sustainability framework for the sheep and wool industries in the world, and this is an important milestone in its evolution and our work towards better understanding opportunities, challenges and impacts in key areas such as environmental health, animal care, economic resilience, and people and communities,” Dr Williams said.
“Having such strong representation from across industry meant we could engage in a well-considered discussion of priority issues capturing a variety of perspectives from across the value chain.”
The meeting also included presentations from subject matter experts about new foundational Framework data, including:
•Visualisation of vegetative cover for sheep grazing regions – Cibo Labs managing director Phil Tickle.
•Determination of emissions intensity of sheepmeat and wool using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) – Integrity Ag and Environment managing director Dr Steve Wiedemann.
•Frameworks, disclosures and standards: what does this mean for agriculture – STR Consulting Principal and Global Reporting Initiative Global Sustainability Standards Board Vice Chair Dr Robyn Leeson.
•SSF On-Farm Insights Report -Meat & Livestock Australia’s Sarah Hyland.
“These presentations delivered valuable insights into how industry is tracking, including the first On-Farm Insights Report which presents relevant data from the recently completed National Producer Survey and provides important benchmarking data for the SSF,” Dr Williams said.
“It enables the Australian sheep and wool industry to understand where we are currently sitting in terms of sustainability on-farm and will allow industry to track progress in the adoption of key sustainability measures.
“This data also supports industry in demonstrating it has a clear pathway towards continual improvement and is striving to be the most sustainable in the world.”
