What a sustainability questionnaire asks, and how to request the data

What the questionnaire covers

The areas a sustainability questionnaire reaches into when the supplier is a meat operation. Nothing is published against any of them here; the questions at the foot of the page explain why.

• Energy

  Electricity and thermal energy. In any refrigerated meat operation these dominate the site-level figures, so a questionnaire asks for consumption by period and, almost always, per tonne of product.

• Greenhouse gas emissions

  Emissions are reported by scope: direct combustion and refrigerant losses, purchased energy, then everything upstream and downstream. A question that does not say which scope it means cannot be answered.

• Water

  Intake, and the cleaning and disinfection regime that Regulation (EC) 852/2004 requires of food business operators. Hygiene obligations set a minimum below which no efficiency target can go.

• Waste and by-products

  In the meat trade animal by-products are governed by Regulation (EC) 1069/2009 and follow a route separate from packaging waste, so the two are never answered as one figure.

• Packaging

  Film, bag, carton and pallet material are properties of a packing configuration rather than of a company, so recyclability and recycled content are answered per format and per specification.

• Transport and distribution

  Transport under temperature control. This is the category a buyer calculates as upstream transport and distribution, and the answer depends on the route, the load and the Incoterm agreed, which fixes who arranges carriage and where risk transfers.

• Animal welfare

  What a welfare question asks a meat supplier for: handling protocols, training records, audit reports. Name which of those your own standard requires, and for which product codes.

• People and safety

  Occupational health and safety, training and employment conditions. Social questionnaires ask for these at establishment level, which is why a request has to name the site it covers.

• Suppliers

  Where raw material comes from. A buyer's own supply chain questionnaire usually starts here, because in meat most of the footprint sits upstream of any processing plant.

How to request data

Four things decide whether a data request can be answered at all: the site, the period, the boundary and the method.

1. 01Set the boundaryName the site, the product codes and the period, and say whether you need absolute figures or figures per tonne. Without them, what comes back cannot be compared in a common unit.
2. 02State the methodName the standard your own sustainability report follows and the emission factors or allocation rules you expect to be applied. Two methods over the same activity data give two different answers.
3. 03Send the templateSend your questionnaire, your customer's, or the specific fields your auditor has asked you to fill, in the file format you have to return it in.
4. 04Ask for a written answerAsk for each field to come back as evidenced, partly evidenced or not held, so that an estimate is never recorded in your report as a measured value.
5. 05Check what you receiveAsk for the period each figure covers and the source behind it. Anything your auditor cannot follow back to a record will not survive assurance.

What the framework already requires

Part of a sustainability questionnaire is answered from the rules a meat operation works inside, and part from how the trade itself works.

• Quality and food safety →The food safety framework a meat plant operates inside, and what can be requested.
• Traceability →One step back and one step forward, under Article 18 of Regulation (EC) 178/2002.
• Animal welfare →What the EU rules already require, and what welfare documentation a buyer can ask for.
• Guide: traceability requirements in meat →What one step back and one step forward means in daily practice.
• Guide: vacuum, IWP and block frozen →How the packing choice changes material, handling and shelf life.
• Guide: cold chain compliance →The temperature obligations that run from dispatch to arrival.

Questions buyers ask

Can you give us a carbon footprint for the product we buy?

No figure is published here. Send the boundary, the period and the method your own sustainability report has to follow, and ask what can be evidenced against them for the codes you buy.

Do you hold an environmental or sustainability certification?

None is named on this page. A certification is only worth naming when the certificate itself can be sent, so ask any prospective supplier for a certificate and its scope rather than reading anything into its absence.

Is your packaging recyclable?

Recyclability is a property of the material used for a given format, so the answer belongs to a packing configuration rather than to a company. Send the codes and the format your programme needs.

Why are there no figures on this page?

Because a figure without a period, a unit, a boundary and a source cannot be checked by your auditor, and one that cannot be checked is worse than none at all.