Patrick Hutchinson presenting to the ICMJ students in Rockhampton.

AS the United States Government has promised to be “woke no longer” and pushes corporates wind back their targets on areas like emissions and diversity, a group of students have been told that the ‘sustainability’ movement is still a present and import challenge for the Australian industry.

University students are currently gathering for the Intercollegiate Meat Judging northern conference and competition in Rockhampton – where they are hearing from a range of leaders about the opportunities and challenges of working in the meat industry.

The ‘sustainability’ movement has been a theme of recent ICMJ conferences, with industry bodies like Meat & Livestock Australia dedicating a lot of time, effort and money to the cause, covering areas like environmental stewardship, animal welfare and diversity.

While President Trump’s tariffs have been one of the big focuses in recent months, the outcomes of his stance on sustainability-related policies was the main discussion in the early sessions of the conference.

Australian Beef Sustainability Framework chair Patrick Hutchinson and Stacey McKenna from the Midfield Group both addressed the topic – with the President pushing multi-national supply chain companies, like McDonald’s, to pull back on some of their targets in areas like emissions and gender balance.

Mr Hutchinson was fresh back from a trip to the United States, which included attending the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef meeting.

Australia still pushing ‘sustainability’ policies

Australia’s direction on sustainability policies is also up in the air, with a Federal election underway. The incumbent Government has made a series of big changes to the beef industry on the grounds of ‘sustainability’ – including the ban of live sheep exports by sea, new laws requiring companies to report their emissions and now a proposal to list buffel grass as a weed.

The opposition is promising to wind back many of those policies.

Mr Hutchinson said the beef industry was one of the most sustainable in the world and it was important for the industry to demonstrate that.

“We have to realise that this is not a situation for us as an industry where we can say ‘oh, we are going to kick back now’,” he told the crowd.

“Sustainability is not a fluffy thing on a label, consumers care, Governments care and if we don’t care we are going to get left behind.”

Mr Hutchinson used the current review of the Australian dietary guidelines as a good reason for the industry to keep working proactively in demonstrating its sustainability.

“For the first time in history the Australian Government wants to turn around and tell you all ‘don’t worry about nutrition anymore, worry about sustainability’,” he said.

“These are dietary guidelines that go to every doctor in the country.”

Australian setting the standards

Mr Hutchinson said for many years the Australian beef industry had set its own standards, through measures like traceability and other efficiencies.

But recently there has been a push from other countries challenging those standards. President Trump has criticised the industry for its stance on American beef imports and Europe has tried to ban the import of Australian beef linked to “deforestation”.

Mr Hutchinson said it was important to note that there is still a strong demand for Australian beef.

“People do not want to see us drop out, people do not want to ban us or anything like that,” he said.

“We are doing improved water use, improved animal welfare, improved landcare. The beef industry is one of the most sustainable in the world. Those who work in the processing world that we use everything in a beast. We are the second biggest manufacturing industry in the country.”

Mr Hutchinson said there was a careful balance to strike.

“Do too little and we lose markets, do too much and we price ourselves out of markets,” he said.

Gender diversity targets under fire

A particular area of attack for the Trump administration has been ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies set by many companies. McDonald’s, Walmart and Google are three of many corporates who have scaled back their diversity targets as a result of the Government pressure.

Stacey McKenna speaking at the ICMJ conference.

Stacey McKenna from The Midfield Group is the Australian chair of an organisation called Meat Business Women, which is working to increase the representation of women in the meat industry.

She was asked by a student in a crowd if she thought the Trump administration’s push against diversity and inclusion programs was likely to flow through to Australia. Ms Mckenna said Australia still appeared to be receptive of diversity and inclusion policies – however, there was clearly pressure.

“We are not seeing it too much in Australia as yet, but I think it will have impacts as we move forward,” she said.

“The US is our major trading partner, those organisations that we are producing into are under instruction to remove their diversity and inclusion programs. So, it takes the encouragement away from Australia to feed into those programs.

“We are working hard to show the value of diversity and we have found business with good diversity have about a 25pc higher value. ”

See earlier story from ICMJ in Rocky this week