Meat Industry Must Grow Sustainably, Tyson Executive Says: Q&A

(Bloomberg) -- Protein consumption is set to expand as millions of people across the world emerge from poverty, so food companies face a challenge around growing while reducing their impact on the environment, according to Justin Whitmore, chief sustainability officer at Tyson Foods Inc.

He focuses on environmental issues, animal welfare and other social responsibility issues, while also overseeing general strategy for the company. That includes a venture capital arm, which recently bought a stake in lab-meat producer Memphis Meats Inc. and expanded its position in vegetarian burger maker Beyond Meat.

He spoke to Emily Chasan and Simon Casey on Jan. 25. Comments have been edited and condensed.

How can a meat company play a role in tackling climate change?

We are setting science-based targets for greenhouse gases. Commitments are so important to be made publicly and tracked because they help people understand what you stand for. About 90 percent of our emissions come from our supply chain and are not owned by the company, so the key will be incentivizing farmers. We have to work with the farmers to support them in gaining the capability to do this — both from a financial and labor perspective.

We need to ensure we have the capability to measure our emissions and we’re doing that by looking inside our own operations for opportunities in fertilizer, anaerobic digestion and turning waste product into steam that can power aspects of our operations. We’re piloting and launching activities like those in our supply chain today and looking at what we can scale. It will be a journey rather than a snap-your-fingers-and-it’s-done process.

There are more people in the world, and more of them are raising themselves out of poverty, so that’s driving protein consumption. You have to set targets for companies that will continue to grow. The model for how you handle a company getting bigger but reducing its footprint and contributing to greenhouse gas reductions is a challenge I’m seeing the industry work its way through.

Why did you combine head of sustainability and strategy roles?

Sustainability has to sit between strategy and execution for us to reach our goals. Growth — both financially and from a social impact and environmental perspective — requires that your strategy is grounded in those ideas. That will guide how you invest in businesses and how you roll out programs. Separating the roles, given what we need to accomplish, didn’t seem to drive toward that outcome. Continuous improvement is also a part of sustainability for us because you need a deployment organization in the plants if you’re going to be serious. A lot of companies are thinking about sustainability more now, but ultimately they have to have the infrastructure around them to take that capital and turn it into activities that matter in the plants.

How is sustainability linked to your strategy?

Strategy can be redefined if you are thinking about sustainability at the same time. The journey that companies have to take in food starts with setting bold public commitments. We will be doing that in the coming months in areas such as greenhouse gases, water, animal well-being and food transparency. Those goals also have to link to employee welfare and the communities we operate in.

All of these issues really have to be taken together. If you optimize for environment only, you could create some poor outcomes potentially for animals, such as affecting density per square foot for chickens or animals’ access to outdoors.

You say you’re a protein company now. What does that mean?

Protein is what’s growing. That’s what consumers are demanding. If there’s a form of protein out there that is being consumed, we plan to be a part of it. We’re going to continue to invest in chicken and pork and beef, however growth in protein comes in a variety of forms and we plan to participate in that.

How are consumer preferences changing around protein?

What we’ve found in most of our research, is that consumers care much more that you act with integrity and that they can trust you, more than they focus on individual issues. There’s a lack of trust in big food that is thematically out there.

But behaviors around health and wellness are changing broadly across generations. Sometimes people get anchored on millennials, but the reality is all consumers are shifting their expectations of companies, and the amount of information available — both credible and not — is significant. It’s creating a conversation about where your food comes from, whether you’re 28 or 58.

How do you prioritize what steps to take first?

The prospects for influencing the food system are tremendous. The greatest opportunity we have is stitching together the stakeholders in multiple areas. Prioritization has to be about the activities that align around shared causes.

There are things we can do quickly without conflict around buying feed, bringing energy- and water-smart technology into our plants, and remote video auditing of animals. Individual issues have solutions, but we also need to bring that together in a model that’s financially successful. It’s going to take a coalition of people coming together to reach larger goals.

To contact the reporters on this story: Emily Chasan in New York at echasan1@bloomberg.net, Simon Casey in New York at scasey4@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alicia Ritcey at aritcey@bloomberg.net, Peter Eichenbaum, Ainslie Chandler

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