Adopting a Common Language for Sustainability Reporting

OSI’s ability to track progress toward our sustainability goals comes down to metrics. The operational data we collect across the company is critical to forming and sharing a clear picture of where we are on our sustainability journey and how that compares to our industry peers.

To that end, OSI has been working for years to standardize the data we collect. Our efforts have spanned the supply chain and include everything from on-farm projects to measure carbon emissions to the ongoing OSI-wide implementation of a new international safety standard.

Our Global Carbon Task Force, Global Water Task Force and Global Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Council have been spearheading standardization efforts in collaboration with OSI's Global Sustainability Team. As the process progresses, we've benefited from an ever-clearer picture of where we're succeeding, facing challenges, and what it will take to reach our ambitious social responsibility, supply chain, and environmental goals.

Beyond giving us insight into our progress, the metrics we collect enable us to share more detailed information about our sustainability efforts with partners and the wider industry. Transparency holds us accountable for meeting the goals we publicly set. Communicating effectively also enables us to collaboratively problem solve with others in the industry.

"Sustainability is a multi-stakeholder process that requires people both inside and outside of OSI to work toward unified goals," OSI's Global Sustainability Team wrote in a statement. "That's why we strive to lead our industry toward increased transparency and improvements in how we all measure and report on our operations."

To increase transparency, we've ramped up our disclosures over the last few years, providing voluntary information to organizations like the climate non-profit CDP and the Global Reporting Initiative, which offers companies a best practice framework for reporting on environmental, social and economic impacts. To take that sharing a step further, we recently signed onto the North American Meat Institute’s (NAMI) Protein PACT, an industry-wide effort to harmonize the way companies measure, report and verify progress on all aspects of sustainability.

Our team members were part of the advisory committee that helped frame the Protein PACT’s goals. OSI President and COO Dave McDonald, a NAMI board member, also endorsed the effort to increase industry transparency through improved measuring and reporting.

The first-of-its-kind framework will require packing and processing companies to track and eventually report dozens of metrics related to environmental impact, animal welfare, food safety, worker health and wellness, and labor and human rights. Some metrics and indicators include water management and food waste reduction plans, energy use, and participation in species-specific animal welfare programs.

While OSI already collects much of the required data for our sustainability purposes, the Protein PACT will align our data collection with the broader industry and enable us to contribute publicly to a more transparent and aggressive sustainability effort. This participation will involve some additional data collection and reporting, which will help us benchmark our program against the industry’s definition of sustainability.

It's an essential step for the industry, which we’re proud to support, and another way we are working to uphold our responsibility to work inside and outside our walls to advance our vision of a more sustainable future.