Australian Beef Sustainability Framework 2022 released

The beef industry’s latest sustainability update shows it is embracing the use of pain relief. Find out what other key targets have been met.

Beef producers are continuing to reduce their carbon footprint and more of them are using pain relief for animal husbandry procedures.

They are just two of the achievements being lauded by the industry in its latest Australian Beef Sustainability Framework annual update, launched in Sydney today.

This year’s report was the fifth update, since the launch of the ABSF in 2017.

With the industry working to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, the update showed there had been a 58.21 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from the 2005 baseline — up from 51 per cent in 2018.

ABSF chair Mark Davie told The Weekly Times as an industry, to achieve that was a great result.

“We are doing a lot of work on that target and I don’t think we are yet seeing some of the research come into play, so there will still be plenty of gain to be made,” he said.

Mr Davie said another highlight from the report, was the percentage of industry using pain relief for invasive husbandry procedures.

The report found 35 per cent of producers were using pain relief, up from 30 per cent last year.

“We have an industry target for 100 per cent adoption by 2030, so it is great to see that progress. The key thing there will be education and availability of the product to continue to progress,” he said.

“I know producers who start to use pain relief, use it once and see the results on the ground and they don’t look back.”

The report also found 79.6 per cent of Natural Resource Management regions achieved healthy ground cover thresholds last year.

“This was after people were coming out of drought, so it is exciting to see more resilience in the land,” he said.

Food waste was a new metric included this year.

The report found 2.39 million tonnes of food waste was recovered and diverted from landfill along the beef value chain.

“This is an excellent step forward as reducing waste will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of beef produced,” Mr Davie said.

Mr Davie said the aim of the framework was to help consumers, customers and stakeholders to understand, “as an industry we want to be accountable on these sustainability issues and key requirements”.

“People should feel good about eating beef because we are so focused in this space.”