At Goodman Fielder we believe that making food better includes using more sustainable ingredients. We know that the growing and production of our ingredients can make a positive contribution to the communities and ecosystems from which we source but we also recognise the potential for these same ingredients to have the opposite effect. We are committed to achieving greater transparency, supporting sustainable agriculture practices and promoting regenerative techniques.
Through the Australian Chapter of the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform we have access to tools and industry insights to help inform our view of the sustainable practices that can be adopted at a farm level. We also use multi stakeholder forums such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to align our efforts with industry standards and support a collective approach to industry transformation.
There are often other organisations involved in collecting material from farms, converting them into ingredients and transporting them before we purchase them. Gaining full transparency through this supply chain back to farm is part of the sustainable sourcing challenge. We also appreciate the need for each participant in the supply chain to be upholding our expectations regarding ethical and sustainable practices.
As part of the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform in Australia, Goodman Fielder has been instrumental in guiding and influencing the discussion around sustainable agriculture, sharing industry knowledge and showcasing best practices. In 2014, we made a commitment to only purchase Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) (mass balance or better) in Australia and New Zealand and more recently bolstered this criteria by adopting Wilmar’s industry leading No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation Policy. In 2020, the WWF awarded us the leading score for an Australian based company in their Palm Oil Buyers Scorecard. Similarly, we committed to transitioning to cage-free eggs for products we make in Australia and New Zealand. We have already achieved over 95% cage free in Australia including fresh free range eggs for our Praise mayonnaise products and our work in New Zealand is part of a broader industry transformation.
The three key components to this work include prioritising which ingredients to target first, defining what sustainably sourced means in the context of those ingredients and building a supply chain that provides access to these sustainably sourced ingredients. Our initial target will be based on scale, impact and risk and will include high volume ingredients such as rice, sugar, flour, fats and oils as priority products where we can improve transparency and sourcing to ensure a large component of our supply chain meets our ethical and sustainable standards.