One of our Animal Agriculture Alliance board members, NPPC’s Dallas Hockman, can frequently be heard saying, “We can’t just talk about what we’re against, we have to focus on what we’re for.” I spend a lot of time in this blog talking about the challenges animal agriculture is up against (including the groups and individuals who are against us, no matter what we do), but I want to take the opportunity today to shed light on what we are “for” — safeguarding the future of animal agriculture.

The Alliance truly believes that farmers and ranchers, and the animal agriculture community, share the same values as today’s consumers. We care about animal welfare, protecting the environment and being positive contributors to our communities. Unfortunately, the negative headlines we’re constantly seeing and the issues I write about on this blog make it clear that we have to do a better job of demonstrating those values to our consumers and other key audiences.

That’s why we’re excited to join forces with 11 other organizations and companies from across animal agriculture to launch the Protein PACT — for the People, Animals and Climate of Tomorrow. The Protein PACT is a commitment to work transparently and accelerate progress toward global sustainable development goals in order to ensure sustainable meat, poultry and dairy are part of solutions for healthy diets and a healthy future.

The Protein PACT is not yet another communications initiative (as important as those are). It’s about walking the walk, not just talking the talk. In addition to explaining the positive contributions the animal agriculture community is already making to people, animals and climate, collaborators are working within their organizations and across the industry to establish transparent baselines and benchmarks for continuous improvement, setting ambitious targets for progress to align with global goals and committing to communicate efforts proactively and transparently.

For example, the North American Meat Institute has developed five core areas for making commitments, tracking progress, and delivering ambitious improvements: humane care for healthy animals, a diverse workforce and safe workplaces, safe products, high-quality protein for balanced diets and optimized contributions to healthy land, air and water. The Meat Institute is now seeking feedback from anyone and everyone on its draft framework. Following the public comment period, they intend to set ambitious targets for members of all sizes to publicly report commitments and deliver progress in all five focus areas by 2030. The U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Poultry and Eggs is also currently accepting public comments on its new sustainability framework.

I encourage you to support these important efforts by offering feedback on the draft frameworks and considering how your company or organization might be able to get involved in the work of the Protein PACT. While the group already represents a broad spectrum of animal agriculture from farm to fork, as much involvement as possible will be needed to truly move the needle for the future of animal protein.

Animal protein makes a PACT

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