As calls to adopt more responsible supply chains grow, many players are creating lasting change. One leader in this effort is Sabina Garcia, Co-founder and Chief Program Officer of Global Food Partners, a science-based consulting firm that works with businesses to implement and maintain high animal welfare and responsible sourcing policies that improve profitability and sustainability.
In her efforts to convert the supply chains of major food corporations, Sabina also works with hotel and restaurant groups on the buy side, utilizing GFP’s proprietary network to help locate new suppliers that meet their animal welfare standards.
I recently caught up with Sabina to explore the work behind Global Food Partners, obstacles in the way of achieving 100% cage-free supply chains, and how restaurants can transition to a more sustainable and circular model.
BoFB: Briefly, tell us about Global Food Partners.
Global Food Partners is a Singapore-based multinational consultancy firm that helps food businesses and suppliers to develop, implement and report progress on higher animal welfare, responsible sourcing goals and production practices. We focus on cage-free egg procurement and production in Asia. We are uniquely positioned to work with both sides of the supply chain – buyers from the food industry – including food manufacturers, restaurant groups, food service companies and hospitality brands – and directly with egg producers and suppliers, to help develop and implement good cage-free sourcing and production practices.
While every client engagement is unique, most involve three phases: planning, which involves helping companies develop their policy language, sourcing criteria and localised implementation roadmaps; personalised implementation support to execute roadmaps to ensure businesses meet their animal welfare targets in challenging markets and, ongoing support, particularly in communicating and reporting progress, staff training and narrating their impact stories to key stakeholders. Simultaneously, we work with egg producers to transition from conventional methods to higher-welfare cage-free production through our various training and support programmes.
BoFB: What learnings have you drawn from your work that you can apply to build momentum for a 100% cage-free supply chain?
There are many learnings from our work with the food industry on cage-free egg sourcing. One is the importance of ensuring teams feel involved and feel ownership– this includes CSR, sustainability, communications, and procurement teams. We want teams to be motivated to implement the project and understand why cage-free sourcing is important to the company, how it improves the lives of animals, and how their individual efforts make an impact.
On a similar note, with egg suppliers, we ensure that we take a collaborative initiative by working together with them and the buyers to support them in the transition to cage-free. Suppliers need to see the demand and be supported, engaged and motivated to transition to cage-free production. This can be done through open and transparent conversations about production requirements, signing long-term contracts, and facilitating support for their transition to cage-free.
Another key focus is taking a personalized approach and understanding the local context. Food businesses and egg suppliers need different types of support depending on the region and individual market. Just like with most CSR and sustainability initiatives, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to cage-free implementation. We need to listen to local teams and suppliers to understand their needs and how GFP can help them overcome challenges and achieve success.
BoFB: How have you worked to raise restaurant players’ interest to transition to higher welfare cage-free eggs? In your experience, what has been the biggest obstacle to getting restaurants to give real attention to this?
We’ve worked with many restaurant businesses to transition to higher welfare cage-free eggs, both in Asia and globally. In response to consumer demand for higher welfare and more responsibly-sourced products, many restaurant companies have already committed to only sourcing cage-free eggs. The challenge now is ensuring they meet their transition deadlines and targets in a cost-effective manner. The greatest obstacles are often increased cost and a limited supply of cage-free eggs. Cage-free is still nascent in many Asian markets, although producers are increasingly transitioning to and expanding their cage-free production to meet growing consumer demand. To overcome these cost and availability challenges, many restaurant businesses offer support with technical training for their suppliers to help them gain knowledge and skills in good cage-free production. This helps bring down the cost of their cage-free eggs and increase their availability.
BoFB: How do you help restaurant groups implement their sustainability and animal welfare goals?
We provide implementation support to both sides of the supply chain- food businesses, including restaurant groups, and their suppliers. This includes helping food businesses develop and enhance their animal welfare policies and sourcing criteria, and providing staff training to ensure there is a clear understanding of the company’s animal welfare and sourcing policies. These first few steps help set the company up for successful policy implementation.
Additionally, we provide technical support directly to suppliers to transition to higher welfare on-farm practices. This includes training in best practice management, and bird health and welfare to ensure the farmer’s long-term profitability and sustainability, and that their production practice meet the food business’s requirements.
To best understand the needs of our client, the first step is to conduct a thorough assessment of their egg supply chain in Asia, which allows us to understand their procurement structure, volumes, egg and egg products procured and assess the status of their implementation per market. Based on the information gathered and GFP knowledge of the market, we deliver a roadmap that includes localised implementation strategies and solutions, milestones, and timelines to ensure the company meets its cage-free sourcing targets. Localised strategies are needed because clients are often at different implementation stages in different markets, and the maturity of cage-free egg markets also varies across the region.
To support the food industry and egg suppliers, this month (July 2021) we are launching our virtual e-learning courses for food businesses, “Fundamentals: Cage-free Egg Policy Development & Implementation” and for egg suppliers “Cage-free egg production: The basics’. In addition to this, we are working with industry leaders to establish cage-free training centres and model farms in Indonesia and China to provide practical training in best practice cage-free management and production.
BoFB: You recently developed a centralized reporting platform to allow food corporations to more efficiently report and communicate progress on cage-free egg pledges. Of these, what percentage are restaurant groups and how can consumers access that information?
WelfareProgress, our new centralized reporting platform on cage-free egg commitments, will launch this month (July 2021), and will allow food corporations, including restaurant groups, to report on their cage-free egg commitment progress in Asia and globally. Once the platform is launched, restaurant groups can register and submit their annual progress report. Consumers and other stakeholders can access the platform and progress information at welfareprogress.com.
Currently, there are over two hundred restaurant groups with cage-free egg commitments, from the Americas to Asia. In addition to those pledges, hundreds of other food businesses around the world- including food service providers and food manufacturers- have also committed to go cage-free and many are proactively looking to report and disclose their progress on this issue. WelfareProgress will help companies demonstrate progress on their cage-free commitments through accurate, thorough and timely reporting, allowing them to provide credible information to investors, animal advocacy groups, suppliers and consumers.
WelfareProgress allows companies to publicly showcase their cage-free implementation progress on a single platform, reducing the burden of filling out multiple questionnaires and responding to requests from animal advocacy groups, and at the same time increase transparency on this initiative. We have got an agreement among key animal advocacy organisations to reference this platform in lieu of their individual progress surveys and questionnaires.
BoFB: What do you see as the most important challenges for restaurants as they continue to deliver on improving their sustainability record?
Two of the greatest challenges are often increased cost and limited availability of sustainable products. In the case of cage-free eggs, cost varies from country to country, but it’s estimated that in mature markets, cage-free production costs are often between 20-40% more than cage production. Many of the markets in Asia are developing cage-free egg production and hence there is limited availability within the region.
As mentioned earlier, the cost of cage-free production should decrease over time. As farmers gain more experience and technical knowledge in farm management, disease prevention and treatment, productivity often increases and mortality decreases. We have seen this happen in different places around the world, such as North America, Europe and Latin America.
BoFB: What is your advice to restaurants that have begun the journey of transitioning towards a more sustainable and circular model?
My advice is to engage and involve your team and your suppliers as much as possible in the implementation process. The companies that have had the most success in this journey are those that ensure their teams feel ownership over the projects and understand the initiative is important to the company and society. They’ve also approached this collaboratively with their egg suppliers, providing open communication from the start on new sourcing requirements and criteria, and giving them more confidence to transition to higher welfare systems. This includes signing longer-term contracts and supporting or facilitating technical training.
As mentioned before, we also always recommend assessing the local context when developing implementation solutions. For example, an implementation approach that worked for a restaurant in the Netherlands may not be successful for a restaurant in Japan. Even within Asia, markets and local situations vary greatly. Implementing a cage-free policy in Indonesia will likely involve different steps and approaches than in Singapore. It’s important to discuss implementation challenges and opportunities with local procurement teams and suppliers to develop a feasible implementation roadmap and timeline for each market.
My last piece of advice is to seek support from experts in the field! You don’t need to do it alone – companies like Global Food Partners have experience working with companies of all shapes and sizes to develop tailored solutions to ensure companies reach their cage-free and broader animal welfare sourcing targets.
You can learn more about Sabina’s work here.