The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association’s Dennis Laycraft was elected as the 2016 president of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB) by a unanimous vote. Other GRSB leadership positions elected were Carlos Saviani, World Wildlife Fund, as vice president, and Cameron Bruett, JBS, as Executive Committee member-at-large.

Laycraft has extensive experience in the areas of trade, product safety and animal disease issues. He has been active on both the national and international levels, addressing issues impacting Canada’s beef producers for several years.

“The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef has well established itself as the global meeting area for discussions on defining and identifying sustainable beef production. Given this accomplishment, the GRSB is moving forward into a new era, and the development of a strategic plan is needed going forward,” said Laycraft. “Supporting the establishment of new national or regional roundtables and initiatives, as well as helping coordinate and connect an international sustainability research strategy are roles that I feel the GRSB is well suited to take on.”

Forrest Roberts, former CEO of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in the U.S. and current GRSB president, said, “GRSB has made tremendous progress since its founding in 2012, and Dennis will help to continue the organization’s success. Building on GRSB’s definition of sustainable beef adopted a year ago, there is momentum among the regional roundtables in Brazil, Canada, and the U.S. to do the hard work of developing indicators and metrics to measure sustainability in the beef value chain and GRSB will need to be engaged in order to provide any needed guidance.”

At its 2014 Global Conference in São Paulo, Brazil, GRSB members adopted a set of principles and criteria necessary to define sustainable beef production on a global scale. Given the complexity and vast differences in beef industries throughout the world, GRSB intentionally did not put forth specific indicators and means of verification, as those are best developed by the various beef-producing regions.