Isonomy is the aim of monitoring, says Breno Felix from Agrotools
Tracking the cattle chain to avoid deforestation in the Amazon is an activity that, although not new, is becoming increasingly more urgent. The whole world is clamouring for more sustainable production practices and demands transparency from companies. Standardising the monitoring of this traceablity is a challenge for the sector.
"Faced with the need to align and standardise, the six leading companies, i.e. the three large beef processors (JBS, Marfrig and Minerva) together with the three largest retailers - Grupo Pão de Açúcar, Walmart (now BIG) and Carrefour - have joined forces to align the monitoring rules.
Between 2017 and 2018, these six companies came up with a first draft of what the Aligned Protocol would look like with the help of consulting firm Agrotools. In 2019, Imaflora, through the Beef on Track Project, joined in with the help of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which was interested in setting up official rules applicable to all companies.
These combined efforts then allowed for further review with the involvement of prosecutors and civil society organisations. The new joint creation has enabled incremental improvements, such as the definition of clear rules that did not exist before.
Agrotools is an important part of this process because it saw that monitoring offered an opportunity to generate positive impact on the chain at a time when impactful businesses were not yet talked about and there was no one making technology for agribusiness on a large scale.
"We created a tool to handle the strategic data of the largest beef processors in the country and transformed it into an accessible product, both financially and operationally. The inclusion of retailers in this process accelerated the adoption of tracking tools and boosted the work," said Breno Felix, project director at Agrotools, also a participant in the Beef on Track Program.
The company today operates in other chains with the Safe tool, which allows implementing sustainability policies in any supplier chain. It is multi-protocol, multi-criteria, low cost and it is user operated. "The aim has always been to bring about market isonomy," Felix adds.
Cattle Suppliers Series Episode 5: Indirect Suppliers: How to move forward in chain traceability?
The video directly addresses the monitoring program for suppliers and indirect suppliers in the livestock chain and issues related to transparency.
Beef on Track Program publishes the Monitoring Protocol
Document enables the comparison of audits of meatpackers and increases data consistency
Document about the monitoring of the cattle supply chain in the Cerrado is available on the website
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