Men and women with hands covered in frostbite, forced to endure grueling workdays that stretch to 12 hours and beyond. Communities obliged to purchase drinkable water because the groundwater is too contaminated. These are just some of the dangerous conditions, human rights abuses and environmental degradation that could be lurking in the feed supply chain, as unveiled in a recent report by Corporate Accountability Lab, a human rights legal group.

For experts on global food production, these findings are shocking but not surprising. They are a window into a complex system fraught with sustainability and human rights challenges. Moreover, they are a clear signal to companies that they still have a long way to go in identifying and addressing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks in their feed supply chains.

Feeding more than 8 billion people comes at a cost. Global food systems are responsible for roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, 70% of freshwater use, 70% of biodiversity loss, and 80% of deforestation. These statistics reflect systems under strain, with serious implications for food security, economic stability and global health. 

These challenges extend to the feed supply chain. Livestock and aquaculture producers have limited visibility into the origin and production of the food their animals consume. Where do the ingredients come from? How were they made? Even for companies that are earnestly trying to engage in sustainable and ethical practices, these are hard questions to answer.

Numerous factors contribute to the opaqueness of the feed supply chain. Feed companies closely guard their proprietary formulations. Up to six tiers of suppliers separate these companies from producers, and each new tier usually comes with less visibility than the last. Even the list of ingredients included in the feed doesn’t tell the full story, because any given feed formulation can include up to 200 ingredients sourced from different suppliers. And farmers growing the exact same ingredient in the same region can utilize such wide-ranging farming practices that the land and emissions footprint for that ingredient can fluctuate by 100 times, depending on the farming operations and productions systems used.

All of this adds up to a lack of transparency and traceability that can lead to unintended support for deforestation, overfishing and human rights abuses. And without a holistic picture of supply chains, good-faith efforts to improve sustainability can end up simply shifting the burden somewhere else. This is what happened when efforts to substitute fish meal with soy in aquaculture feed, intended to reduce pressure on fish stocks, inadvertently contributed to the clearing of forests for soy cultivation.

A fragmented patchwork of reporting structures and methodologies hampers the journey to sustainability. Companies struggle with an over-reliance on standards and averages that obscure the real impacts of their supply chains. And without primary data, efforts to make meaningful changes are often based on inaccurate or incomplete information.

Companies need a structured framework for evaluating ESG risks across feed supply chains, to gain enhanced visibility for identifying and mitigating sustainability risks, down to the individual ingredient level. With more knowledge, they can make sourcing decisions that align with their sustainability goals, from avoiding pollution to reducing emissions and eliminating unfair labor and slavery from their supply chains. Comparing sustainability risks at the individual ingredient level can also help businesses determine how future novel ingredients may impact the risk profile of a feed formulation, and which of these ingredients may have the greatest potential for scalability. Member companies of the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have developed an ESG Feed Risk Assessment Tool for companies across feed supply chains to do just this.

The salmon aquaculture sector has already made significant strides in improving carbon footprint and traceability, but there’s widespread recognition that there’s more work to be done to improve holistic sourcing decisions.

Companies should look for tools that offer utility for the broader spectrum of stakeholders in the animal protein production sectors, including livestock producers. An effective tool will have a proven track record: For example, if a tool works for salmon aquaculture, which has one of the most complex feeds in food production, it can easily be applied to less complicated aquaculture supply chains, and wider scale to other animal protein supply chains.

Once properly equipped, stakeholders across the food production industry can take a significant step toward transparency, accountability and sustainability in their supply chains. The stark reality is that no single organization, business or government can transform our global food system on their own. Only through innovation and collaboration can we surmount these daunting challenges, and foster an environment where food production not only meets the demands of a growing population, but also respects the planet and all its inhabitants.

Danny Miller is a sustainability and ESG specialist with World Wildlife Fund. Sophie Ryan is chief executive officer of Global Salmon Initiative.