IEC Board approves GRSE initiative

Prior to the recent IEC Global Leadership Conference, the Board gave the green light to launch a Global Roundtable for Sustainable Egg (GRSE) Production. This initiative was proposed by IEC Vice Chairman Ben Dellaert after discussions with WWF’s Vice President of Food Sustainability, Carlos Saviani.

This roundtable will follow the example of the Beef Industry: the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB), a multi-stakeholder initiative with representation across the value chain in production and consumption.

The goal is to achieve a production that is environmentally sound, socially responsible and economically viable, achieved by continuous improvement in sustainability, through leadership, science, multi-stakeholder engagement and collaboration.

The concept is to develop principles and criteria to define sustainable production. These are used by national or country round tables and then benchmarks these national initiatives.

Possible principles that can be taken into account for the GRSE are:

• Animal health
• Human health
• Environment
• Natural resources
• Animal welfare

IEC will now work to bring together a project working group to start the initial discussions on this project, representatives to consist of scientists, industry, WWF, and also large QSR’s and NGO’s. The first task will be to define relevant and objective criteria.