What does it mean to ‘set the standard’? Does it refer to personal standards, business standards, operating standards or product standards? How are standards perceived?
A simple example of standards can be observed in the normal context of dining out. Whenever an individual visits a restaurant and orders their favorite steak, they tend to reminisce about where they ate the best steak they’ve ever had. At that moment, that specific restaurant set the standard. All other steaks that they eat tend to be compared to the best one.
In an environment of increasing transparency, which is driven forward by a connected world, we have the opportunity to build our brand, create and build our reputation, and set standards. As animal breeders, we’re the first input into the value chain and play an important role through to the end consumer product. Sustainable animal breeding standards currently do not exist, but we believe that we have the opportunity to lead in this through:
- Improved biosecurity.
- Incremental genetic progress to improve efficiency of protein production.
- Balanced breeding programs that maximize value for all parts of the protein value chain, including consumers.
- Improved survivability of animals to generate the full value of all efforts
- Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
Towards fulfilling our mission to support the global food challenge with high quality genetics, we can become the standard-setter in our industry. To become well-known as a standard-setter is an ambitious goal that will not be achieved in one year, but we aim to keep the vision in our minds as our future destination, with our mission providing the roadmap. Once we have ‘set the standard’, we will need to live up to that standard, which means the standards that we set will need to be proven and beneficial.