Our promise and commitment to you, our planet and future generations

Here at WD Meats, we are committed to ensuring that we minimise our impact on the environment as much as possible, so that we may help to protect this precious resource for future generations. We fully understand that the natural environment sustains our business, so we in turn must work to sustain the environment.

We constantly strive to conduct our activities in ways that respect the environment and to ensure that our business growth does not come at the expense of future generations. To this end, we have targeted a number of key areas within our operations which we believe can minimise our impact on the environment.

These include:

• Reducing our water consumption and increasing our water efficiency by (i) looking for new and innovative technologies; and, (ii) ensuring our water is treated to the highest environmental standards.
• Reducing the amount of waste we send to landfill and increasing the percentage of recyclable waste.
• Reducing our carbon footprint by being more energy efficient, including the use of renewable energy sources.

We understand that these are issues which may have far reaching implications in terms of water availability, agriculture and the health of future generations. We believe that by targeting these three primary activities, we are taking active steps to help protect and preserve the environment. As a company, our aim is to prevent or minimise any negative impacts on the environment and we understand that we have a part to play, no matter how small, in ensuring the protection of our planet.

With this in mind, we are constantly looking for ways to improve how we run our business. These measures include: the use of renewable energy supplies; ensuring that we recycle as much of our waste as possible; adoption of new, innovative technologies; ensuring that our staff are fully trained and aware of their environmental impacts; and, signing up to climate change agreements.

We work closely with our farmers and suppliers to ensure that they also maintain the same high standards of environmental awareness as ourselves. This means that we only source from local farms in order to ensure that all our beef carries the British Seal of Approval. In addition, we conduct regular farm checks to ensure that farmers are adhering to our standards of environmental sustainability. Only by doing so, can we make sure that we provide our customers with the best beef, produced in an environmentally sustainable fashion.

In this statement, we pledge our commitment to improving our efficiency, reducing our consumption and increasing our environmental sustainability. We understand that what we do today can have an impact on the environment of future generations. We acknowledge that our business is reliant on the environment and we express our commitment to increasing our sustainability and reducing our environmental impact.

Making provenance a priority

Today’s consumers demand exacting standards. Total traceability of the livestock, their husbandry and welfare all form part of product specification.

WD Meats provides for these ever-increasing standards by working in partnership with local farmers, the Department of Agriculture Veterinary and Farm Development Services and the Livestock and Meat Commission. Our close relationships with these groups give us the ability to procure livestock to unique standards of breed and husbandry, tailor-made to suit the needs of retailers and specialist niche markets.

In addition, our own highly developed producer group, working to the highest farm production quality standards, forms an integral part of our product quality system.

At WD Meats Quality Assurance is a key element of our business: the quality and safety of food are what our customers demand.

In complying with product quality and safety standards, the Technical Department at WD Meats operates an independently audited Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system. This system ensures the highest level of food safety and quality at all points within the production process.

These high standards of quality and safety are delivered through the use of a Total Quality Management (TQM) based system. This enables and empowers the entire workforce to contribute to product quality. The Department of Agriculture’s traceability system, APHIS ONLINE, provides details of the entire life history of the animal, from the farm of its birth, until arrival and receipt at our lairage. Once cattle enter WD Meats’ production process, our local systems then continue the traceability process throughout each stage of production. This system ensures that, from the farm, to the product being dispatched to our
customers, complete traceability is captured.