Launched in 2012, Origin Green is the national sustainability programme for the Irish food and drink industry. It is the only sustainability programme in the world which operates on a national scale, uniting government, the private sector and food and drink producers, through Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board. Since the inception of Origin Green, over 137,000 carbon assessments have been completed on Irish beef and dairy farms, where Dawn Meats sources livestock for processing. These audits have provided over 25 million data points on the performance of Irish farms in relation to sustainable practices.
Dawn Meats has been actively involved and supportive of the Origin Green program since its inception. One of only 8 companies that sponsor the Origin Green Ambassador programme, Dawn Meats has continuously advocated membership of Origin Green and offered support & advice to other member companies. As one of the first verified members of Origin Green we have progressively submitted more ambitious annual Origin Green targets since our earliest plan in 2012. Our sustainability plan makes many commitments including: energy, water, emissions, waste, raw material sourcing, biodiversity, people and community. Under energy, water and emissions we have made significant progress and on average over the last 4 years we have made the following equivalent savings across the group:
Dawn Meats is committed to sustainability and fully supports the collaborative nature of the Origin Green programme. Through industry working together, from farm to fork, we are able to provide our customers and their customers in turn, with sustainable, healthy & high quality meat products. This collaborative work is exemplified at our Newford Farm. Dawn Meats and Teagasc, supported by McDonald’s, have established a standalone suckler herd at Newford, Athenry, Co Galway to demonstrate best practice in sustainable suckler beef production. The herd is run on a fully commercial basis and demonstrates the potential of a moderately large suckler beef farm to generate a viable family farm income when operated to the highest level of technical efficiency and best practice. The farm acts as a shop window for the technologies that drive profitability in a suckler herd and operates in a completely transparent manner, with all measurements and data available to visiting groups, other interested parties and the farming public.
In addition to our supply chain work, we continue to invest internally in our people, plant, processes and technology. Through our membership of Origin Green and many complementary CSR initiatives Dawn Meats is fully committed to the goal of being ‘Europe’s most sustainable meat company’.
For more detail about our sustainability commitments please download our 2016 CSR report.
Origin Green National Sustainability Programme
