What the Greenham Beef Sustainability Standard launch means for beef producers

Over 120 producers, industry experts and innovators gathered in Wangaratta last week for the launch of the Greenham Beef Sustainability Standard, and our co-founder Will Onus was there to be part of it.

The GBSS has been a few years in the making. Developed in partnership with producers, customers and technical experts in response to growing market demand for transparent environmental credentials, it's structured across three tiers- moving from education and planning at tier one through to continuous improvement and carbon neutrality at tiers two and three. Producers who reach tier two are eligible for a 10 cents per kilogram premium, as well as access to Greenham's Certified Regenerative on-pack label- an increasingly valuable credential in export markets like the US, where consumers are actively seeking out grass-fed and regenerative Australian beef and prepared to pay for it.

What makes the standard genuinely interesting is how it was built. Greenham piloted it with around 21 producers across southern Australia before launching, and found that most were already meeting around 80% of the requirements. The standard isn't asking producers to overhaul their businesses, it's asking them to document and demonstrate what they're already doing, and to understand where the gaps are. As one producer put it on the day, "Everything in the GBSS is just good management."

The launch event included a session from Jess Loughland on how the standard works in practice, workshop breakouts on carbon, biodiversity, ground cover and farm safety, and panel contributions from Michael Taylor at Fulton Market Group and producers Linda and Gary Nankervis and Gavin and Christine Furness, who are part of the T2T project in partnership with McDonald's, FMG and Ruminati.

For Ruminati, the GBSS represents exactly the kind of supply chain initiative that makes farm-level emissions data useful in practice: a program with market pull-through, clear producer benefits, and an auditable standard sitting behind it. Congratulations to the Greenham team for getting it across the line.