Beef on Track

Using the Accountability Framework to develop a transparency tool for the beef value chain. 

Created in 2019 by Imaflora, an AFi Coalition member, in partnership with the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, the Beef on Track programme guides stakeholders in the meat and leather value chain to promote transparent livestock farming, free from deforestation, slave labour and not produced in protected areas. With a priority focus on the Brazilian Legal Amazon, the programme has created a set of protocols that demonstrate the social, economic, and environmental advantages to companies of producing and sourcing beef responsibly and legally.

Beef on Track has developed trainings on its protocols that serve as a reference for the Brazilian beef sector. The ‘Guide for Retailers’ includes key criteria, based on the Accountability Framework’s guidance on management systems and supplier control mechanisms, for developing beef procurement systems, and evaluating cattle suppliers from the Amazon. Beef on Track, the Brazilian Supermarket Association (ABRAS), and Brazil's beef sector representatives have also developed a ‘Monitoring Protocol for Cattle Suppliers’ in the Amazon.

In addition, the Beef on Track website offers content and best practices for sector professionals as well as a transparency map showing meatpackers who are signatories to the Beef TAC (the Beef Conduct Adjustment Agreement signed in 2009 between meatpackers and the Brazilian Federal Prosecutor’s Office to prevent the purchase of cattle from farms where illegal deforestation has taken place, or from illegal production in Indigenous Lands, Conservation Units, or producers that use slave labour).

To measure progress, the Brazilian Association of Meat Exporting Industries (ABIEC) recently adopted the Beef on Track Protocol. ABIEC members account for 98% of the country's beef exports. Joint engagement and training by ABIEC and Beef on Track aim to increase the adoption of Beef on Track by ABIEC members to increase the coverage of socio-environmental criteria compliant cattle in Brazil. Beef on Track will launch version 2.0 of the Protocol for Monitoring Amazon Cattle Suppliers in August 2024.

"Beef on Track has the credibility and acceptance to be able to work across all key players in the meat and leather value chain. The Beef on Track monitoring protocol criteria are based on dialogues held with key stakeholders, and enable monitoring of the supply chain by the meatpackers themselves, thereby expanding the possibilities to improve data sharing and communication with the buyer market, both within and beyond Brazil."

- Lisandro Inakake de Souza, Project Manager for Agricultural Chains, Imaflora