Can meat ever be sustainable or is sustainable meat an oxymoron?
As a part of my MBA class on “Management Practices for Sustainable Business” at the Schulich School of Business, I had the opportunity to engage in a fireside chat with Tim Faveri, VP of Sustainability and Shared Value at Maple Leaf Foods Inc. Maple Leaf Foods is one of the leading sustainability pioneers in the Canadian business landscape. Tim, who is a career leader in Environmental and CSR centric roles, is spearheading this initiative.
Tim happily took our questions, and shared candidly about his experiences in advancing the business case for sustainability. We have all witnessed the growing activism around environmental impacts of meat and the pleas to reduce meat consumption to the extent even give up meat altogether. Having read about MLF’s leadership in sustainability, I was very keen to hear an insider’s view on how MLF approached the issue and built their corporate strategy around sustainability. Coming from a background in the mining industry, I’m always interested to hear from professionals who are pioneering planet friendly solutions to their business operations.
This was an insightful talk on how organizations can incorporate sustainability at the core of its corporate strategy. Pivoting to or building a sustainability focus is a complex learning and a cross functional exercise, involving researchers, academics, public policy experts. It is an iterative process, a continuous loop of learning and revising the processes. By focusing on their business and upstream-downstream supply chains, organizations can achieve a greater impact, and move closer to the goal for a circular economy.
Transforming an organization towards a sustainability focussed mission requires the leadership at the top and the Board of Directors to adopt this shared vision and communicate it down to the bottom, so that each and every employee is on the same page. MLF’s employee feedback program, calling for suggestions to becoming a sustainable organization, was one such initiative. Having gone through a similar exercise at my previous organization, I could relate to the impact it must have had on employee motivation and aligning their values with that of the organization.
As a part of another project on a B-corp organization in the food industry, my team and I have been questioning if it makes sense for them to be a B-corp, are they doing it the right way, is it enough, how employees view it, and whether they have another way of engaging and driving impact. So, I was interested to hear Tim’s opinions on product costs, impact on customer buying behaviour. It was insightful to know how MLF accounts for carbon costs as part of project costs, cuts down on unnecessary inputs and costs through R&D, and engages with customers and incorporates their feedback in product development. Tim was sure to mention that MLF is a meat company and will continue to be as long as customers demand those products, so it was upto them now to make sure that they can deliver these products as sustainably as they can.
This chat also made me realize that I still have a lot to learn about this space, opportunities and limitations that organizations face and how as business leaders we can solve them. The significance of sustainability in business is growing and has huge potential from a career perspective as well. Tim encouraged us all sustainability enthusiasts to look for opportunities within our area of expertise with organizations that are doing the work we admire, to learn and to grow and when opportunities arise, don’t shy away from asking for them.