Category: Animal Rights & Environment

By Alissa Sasso

 

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By Tom Murray

At Environmental Defense Fund, we believe that environmental progress and economic growth can and must go hand in hand. EDF+Business works with leading companies and investors to raise the bar for corporate sustainability leadership by setting aggressive, science-based goals; collaborating for scale across industries and global supply chains; and publicly supporting smart environmental safeguards.

This is the second in a series of interviews exploring trends in sustainability leadership as part of our effort to pave the way to a thriving economy and a healthy environment.

As head of the Smithfield Foods’ sustainability program, Stewart Leeth focuses on animal welfare, employee relations, environmental stewardship, food safety and quality, and community development.

EDF has been collaborating with Smithfield for several years now to help farmers optimize fertilizer applications to grow grain for animal feed – and I’m inspired to see the progress that has been made in this arena. But I think this past year was likely the busiest ever for Stewart and his team at Smithfield after they made an industry-leading commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This commitment is great news for the environment and for Smithfield’s business. Of course, there’s still a lot of work ahead for the company to fully implement the pledge and work with others in the animal agriculture industry to improve environmental performance. That’s why EDF is calling upon other food and animal agriculture companies to follow Smithfield’s lead and set their own commitments to improve the environmental impacts of agriculture while generating benefits for communities, customers, and businesses themselves.

I got the chance to chat with Stewart before we team up for a more in-depth discussion about raising the bar on corporate sustainability leadership at the Companies vs Climate event in Miami. Here’s an edited excerpt of our discussion.

Last year Smithfield announced a groundbreaking goal to cut your greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 25% by 2025. That’s 4 million metric tons, or the equivalent of taking nearly 900,000 passenger vehicles off the road. What inspired Smithfield to set the goal and how did you go about putting it in place?

Smithfield has taken a leadership position in many areas over the years, from getting all of our facilities and farms across the country under the ISO certified environmental management system to providing group housing systems for pregnant sows on company-owned farms.

To continue leading the way in sustainability, we needed to take a strong position on greenhouse gas emissions. And our relationship with EDF has been growing over the years, particularly on fertilizer optimization to help farmers reduce emissions on their farms. So when EDF’s Maggie Monast and Senior Director of Smithfield Renewables, Kraig Westerbeek,  started the conversation about the next big step, we took a hard look at it.

We took a look at the GHG goal from a lot of different perspectives and conceptualized our carbon footprint in the form of a pie chart. We began looking at the business case for different parts of that pie, and we found that looking at it in pieces really helped to show what could be accomplished. We then briefed our president and CEO Ken Sullivan, and he was really enthusiastic about moving forward.

For example, a part of the pie is the carbon footprint from our corn supply. We buy literally trainloads of corn to feed our animals. We saw this as an opportunity to work with our suppliers to buy local grain as opposed to importing it from other places, improving the relationships we have with them along the way.

Was there anything else that you learned as you worked on the carbon footprint pie chart analysis?

We tried to identify opportunities for grain producers. For example, we developed a toolkit as well as nutrient management plans for them — which are things we use every day on our own hog farms for manure management. We tried to apply some of those same principles to row crop farming – to help the farmers grow more crop per drop of fertilizer.

The main benefit from our perspective is that it strengthened our overall relationship with farmers in that part of the supply chain. Local grain is more economical, and we are seeing some real benefits from this effort.

On our processing side, we have more than 40 facilities across the U.S. that operate every day – we can see that energy efficiencies will reduce the cost and the overall energy consumption at those locations.

What kind of response have you heard from stakeholders after you set your GHG goal?

From the standpoint of the big companies that buy millions of pounds of our products every year like retailers, restaurant chains, food service companies— it’s been very positive.

Our announcement also coincided with a very large effort by Walmart, one of our biggest customers, to reduce GHGs in their own supply chain. Our goal isn’t specifically tied to that, but it certainly was good timing and our announcement caught their attention as well as the attention of many other customers and consumers.

Some of our suppliers have also asked us if there are any ways that they can help us reach our goal. And our employees are excited, too. Everybody wants to work for and with a company that is responsible.

Earlier this fall, Smithfield announced a new initiative called Smithfield Renewables to support your emissions reduction goal and accelerate your ability to achieve it. How do you think this platform will change how you operate and help meet your climate goals?

We announced the Smithfield Renewables at the COMMIT! Forum in Washington, D.C.  We formed this business unit to help drive innovations to meet our goal and accelerate renewable energy efforts.

Our CEO wanted to make sure we had someone working on the GHG reduction goal every day – thinking about and working towards achieving it.  Kraig Westerbeek will be heading up Smithfield Renewables to vet what kind of projects, vendors, and other partners can help us make it happen.

As an example, we have partnered with a company in Missouri called Roeslein Energy to cover lagoons at our farms in that part of the country. They’re capturing methane, compressing it, and putting it in natural gas pipelines.

According to some estimates, animal agriculture is the second largest contributor to man-made GHG emissions after fossil fuels. As a global business operating in a world that’s more focused on climate change but also demanding more of your product, how are you thinking about that across your operations?

I think the importance of sustainability leadership is growing every day because more consumers are considering these issues when they’re buying goods, including food. And more and more investors are looking for responsible companies to invest in, and they’re quick to punish companies perceived as bad actors.

We all need to take responsibility for our footprint and things that we are doing. I think many companies recognize this, and I think it will drive innovation and technology development to help deal with these issues going forward.

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Where is @SmithfieldFoods now, 1 year after their industry-leading commitment to reduce GHG…
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Your Hong Kong-based parent company WH Group just signed a strategic partnership with JD.com, China’s largest retailer, which will become the exclusive online sales platform for Smithfield’s pork products in China. What implications does this development have for your sustainability goals?

From the very beginning of our relationship, WH Group has been very supportive of our sustainability program. In fact, WH Group as a publicly traded company began reporting on sustainability as well.

Regardless of where consumers are located, they are still interested in whether food is safe and affordable, and produced in a responsible way. I think there is nothing but good in terms of expanding the sustainability footprint for companies like ours.

Can you tell me how and why you got involved in the clean energy policy discussion in North Carolina?

We have a large presence in North Carolina with more than 10,000 employees, many farms, and we contract with family farms to grow animals for us. We also have seven processing facilities throughout the state.

We have done a lot of work on pilot projects focusing on renewables in North Carolina.  The state has some great incentives to encourage renewables. They’ve also created a statutory set-aside for power generation from animal agriculture sources, such as poultry and pork.

Those are some of the reasons we’ve supported clean energy policies in the state for a long time, and in other states as well.

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How the world’s largest pork producer @SmithfieldFoods is raising the bar on corporate…
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What do you want to be known for accomplishing at Smithfield under your leadership?

We have a tagline of “Good food. Responsibly.” That’s how I want the company to be thought of: an ethical and responsible company that produces good food.

Last but not least, what Smithfield products were on your Thanksgiving table this year?

For breakfast, we certainly had a lot of bacon to go with our eggs. For dinner, we included some country ham, salt-cured with brown sugar on top. It’s highly recommended! We’ll have it again at Christmas for sure.

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Follow Tom on Twitter, @tpmurray

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Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has joined a coalition of clean energy, public health, and consumer advocates to support Illinois’ right to[…]

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By Daniel Hill

More and more companies are making public commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions outside of their own operations. Why? Because compared to scope 1 and 2 emissions (from direct activities), avoiding scope 3 emissions can have the greatest impact on a corporate footprint.

The numbers are clear: the majority of GHG emissions come from indirect activities, both upstream and downstream, in the supply chain. In fact, for most of consumer goods products manufacturing, scope 3 emissions account for over 70% of overall GHG emissions. Included is everything from purchasing raw materials to end of life treatment.

But their very nature—being present throughout all stages of production—also makes scope 3 emissions the trickiest to influence. After all, companies can’t see reductions without the help of suppliers.

So how one approaches setting supply chain goals is important:

1. Before anything can be set, the proper stakeholders must be looped into the process. Understanding of how a company’s supply chain works will dictate what data needs to be collected, and from which suppliers;
2. The goal also has to be achievable, and set specifically to a company’s own GHG footprint;
3. A system must in place to credibly measure and report on both the environmental and business impacts;
4. The target should be based in science.

This last point is incredibly important, because setting science-based supply chain targets has officially become mainstream: since 2015, when Walmart surpassed it’s 20 million metric ton GHG avoidance goal, and the Science-Based Target initiative was launched at COP 21 in Paris, over 250 companies (including some of the Fortune 500’s largest) have committed to setting science-based scope 3 goals. Now Walmart’s pushing the envelope even further with its Project Gigaton initiative.

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Reducing corporate footprints by setting science-based supply chain targets has become mainstream,…
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My point here? All this momentum, at such a huge scale, means that without science-based supply chain goals, your company’s sustainability plan will likely not be taken seriously. Not by your customers. Not by your shareholders. And not by your board members or employees.

Yes, navigating scope 3 can be daunting. There are a number of different methods—an absolute reduction goal versus an intensity goal—that take into account different scopes, have different benefits and are for different data needs. In other words, there are a lot of moving parts.

But the good news is there are tools and resources out there that can offer guidance on which approach is best suited for your company, helping to make the process more manageable. EDF’s Supply Chain Solutions Center will present a November 2nd webinar on this exact subject to help you get started.

So be taken seriously. The journey toward sustainable supply chains may contain unexpected twists and turns, but in the end, it will be well worth it… for both your business and the planet.

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By Ben Levitan

This blog was co-authored by Surbhi Sarang, EDF Legal Fellow.

Since taking the helm at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt has attempted to hide his activities from scrutiny by limiting the public’s access to information.

He has ended the decades-long, bipartisan practice of releasing the daily schedules of top agency leadership, removed EPA webpages, and announced harmful policies close in time with private meetings with lobbyists from affected industries.

EDF has been at the forefront of efforts to promote transparency and accountability at EPA. That’s why we just filed a lawsuit to compel EPA to comply with its legal duty to release public records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Scott Pruitt’s record of secrecy and ethical conflicts

Scott Pruitt’s opaqueness and secrecy have sharply contrasted with basic principles of good government.

Under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, the Office of Government Ethics issued regulations for executive branch employees:

To ensure that every citizen can have complete confidence in the integrity of the Federal Government.

Among other requirements:

Employees shall act impartially and not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual” and “shall endeavor to avoid any actions creating the appearance that they are violating the law or . . . ethical standards.

The Office of Government Ethics titled this regulation the “basic obligation of public service.”

Pruitt and his senior leadership have raised serious questions as to whether they are abiding by these principles.

In just one example, earlier this summer thirteen state Attorneys General formally objected to a guidance letter in which Pruitt expressed his flawed, misleading opinion about a crucial issue in litigation over the Clean Power Plan — America’s only nationwide limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants.

The Attorneys General wrote that Pruitt’s conduct was “inconsistent with his agreement not to participate in the litigation,” given that he repeatedly sued EPA over the Clean Power Plan when he served as Attorney General of Oklahoma.

Pruitt also discontinued the practice of releasing his schedule, along with the schedules of senior leadership.

The bipartisan practice of releasing schedules stretches back decades and was initiated expressly:

In order to make the public fully aware of [the Administrator’s] contacts with interested persons.

Following months of public pressure and more than 60 FOIA requests, Pruitt finally released a partial public account of his schedule. But that account provides only a minimal level of detail of how and with whom Pruitt spends his time.

Pruitt later released a more detailed appointments calendar, but it covered a limited date range and included many redactions worthy of additional scrutiny. And neither of those releases provides any transparency for other EPA senior officials.

To obtain any more information about how EPA leadership spends its time, EDF’s only recourse has been to demand the release of these public records under FOIA.

EDF’s efforts to promote transparency and accountability

EDF is taking action to protect important standards of transparency and accountability at EPA — and to keep the public informed about policymaking that directly impacts the health and environment of all Americans.

Our lawsuit concerns three FOIA requests that directly address the integrity of EPA’s operations. For each request, EPA’s legally mandated deadline for providing a response is several months overdue, despite EDF’s extensive outreach to EPA over many months in an effort to elicit the requested records.

The first request seeks records related to the ethics agreement that Pruitt signed shortly after his nomination to lead EPA, in which he outlined:

[S]teps that [he] will take to avoid any actual or apparent conflict of interest.

We submitted this FOIA request in January 2017 – more than nine months ago.

Pruitt’s ethics agreement diverged from the standard language used by the Office of Government Ethics – even though Pruitt’s longstanding and very public opposition to a litany of EPA’s public health and environmental safeguards calls into question his ability to be impartial, particularly on matters in which he represented Oklahoma and long ago took fixed positions. Since taking the oath of office as Administrator, Pruitt has actively tried to undermine public health and environmental protections — like the Clean Power Plan — and has proposed to repeal protections that he had long attacked while Attorney General of Oklahoma.

Our FOIA request seeks records pertaining to the evaluation of Pruitt’s actual or potential conflicts of interest, including any analysis that informed his ethics agreement.

The second request is for records related to Pruitt’s and his senior managers’ schedules.

The most complete information we’ve received so far on Pruitt’s activities is only a select snapshot released through a FOIA request. That snapshot contains more than 100 redacted calendar appointments, and only runs through mid-May.

Even this limited information reveals the special access granted to polluter lobbyists — many of whom come from industries that have supported Pruitt’s political career for years. A more comprehensive release, including the calendars of senior EPA managers, would provide a fuller picture of the constituency that Pruitt and his political staff are serving.

The third request is for public documents related to threats to scientific integrity at EPA.

EDF requested these records in light of the Trump Transition Team’s efforts to single out civil servants at the Department of Energy who worked on climate science and policy. Since we submitted this FOIA request more than seven months ago, subsequent events — including the removal of EPA’s Climate Science website, scientific distortions that accompanied the proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan, threatened efforts that would compromise the integrity of EPA advisory boards, and the muzzling of EPA scientists who were scheduled to deliver public presentations on climate change — have only increased the urgency of providing public access to records about the treatment of scientific integrity at EPA.

EDF will continue working to protect transparency and accountability at EPA by supporting Americans’ ability to access information about health and environmental policies, and by shining a light on the Trump Administration’s attacks on vital safeguards for families and communities across America.

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