ProTerra Foundation – Sectorial Roundtable Statement
THE PROTERRA FOUNDATION PROACTIVELY ENGAGES WITH PROTERRA CERTIFIED ORGANIZATIONS IN BRAZIL TO BOOST CREDIBILITY IN THE MARKET
The ProTerra Foundation is the owner of the Voluntary Sustainability Standard (VSS) called ProTerra Certification Standard. As many other VSS owner, The ProTerra Foundation does not carry out the audits by itself, but it relies on a third-party certification body. Thus, audits against the ProTerra Certification Standard are exclusively conducted by our strategic partner FoodChain ID. When conducting ProTerra audits for certification or verification, auditors are owed to follow the ProTerra Certification Protocol and any other additional quality and integrity procedure defined by the certification body, FoodChain ID.
The ProTerra Certification Standard highlights the importance of economic operators in the food chain (agricultural production, transport and storage and industrial processing) to respect social and environmental criteria, particularly those considered core criteria if they are committed to become certified. Core criteria are those that are considered by the ProTerra Foundation as essential to mitigate sustainability negative impacts.
Furthermore, the ProTerra Certification Standard pays particular attention to those criteria related to biodiversity and conservation of natural resources as these represent “hot spots” in the soybeans production, and as a consequence, the sustainability risk related to them could cascade through the entire supply chain (e.g. meat or salmon production).
As a Foundation that pursues a more sustainable food and feed supply chain, we expect companies adhering to our Certification Standard to not only “comply” with the criteria at the time of the audit, but also take the necessary diligent measures to ensure that they honour the international values of respecting human rights and the environment in their daily business, including their sourcing policies.
While our certification partner can do its best professional effort to assess the reality of the company at the time of the audit, it is ultimately the responsibility of the certified organization to abide by the letter and the spirit of whatever VSS it has chosen to follow.
Understanding that there are multiple implementation challenges in the sustainability journey and that endemic and systemic issues can only be tackled in a collective effort, the ProTerra Foundation wants to extend an invitation to all Brazilian companies with a valid
ProTerra certificate, to engage in a sectorial roundtable constructive dialogue facilitated by the ProTerra Foundation to: a) Identify root-cause of any possible shortcoming in the compliance with the ProTerra Certification Standard b) Elaborate a joint roadmap to reinforce certified organisations’ sustainability commitment c) Boost Brazilian companies’ credibility and respectability in the market.
Logistics and agenda of this first sectorial roundtable towards boosting social and environmental responsibility in the soy sector will be available soon in our website.
For further questions: info@proterrafoundation.com
Published: October 30, 2018