Wild Harvest Sustainability Assessment achieves major milestone
24th June 2021
SAI Platform’s Wild Harvest Project today announces yet another critical milestone towards creating a new toolset for companies active in wild harvest supply chains. In June, the project initiated the testing and review with suppliers.
As the link to on-the-ground wild harvesting activities and operations, suppliers represent an important factor in current and future wild harvest sustainability initiatives. Suppliers’ knowledge of their supply chains is vital to help validate the applicability of the assessment in a real-world setting.
Previous milestones included the completion of phase one and initiation of phase 2 of the project, despite constraints and restrictions brought about by COVID-19. The first phase brought together member companies to develop the tools that would form the basis of the assessment. This included a desk-based risk assessment as well as a performance self-assessment to be validated through a field audit. The second phase of the project is focusing on the testing and trialling of the tools across supply chains and multiple stakeholders.
Other major developments for this project include the expansion of the wild harvest sustainability assessment model for suppliers that are relying on independent collectors. Wild harvest operations generally source from two different types of collectors: those that are contracted directly by the collection point, and those that sell independently to the collection point. The type of arrangement can vary widely based on country and ingredient. While the initial version of the assessment was suitable for systems with directly contracted collectors, nearly half of supply chains involved in the project source from independent collectors, emphasising the need for this tool to support both types of systems.
Right now, suppliers from both types of wild harvest operations are reviewing the assessment and their comments will be incorporated prior to field testing starting in August of 2021.
The wild harvest sustainability assessment is anticipated to be released at the end of 2022.
About the Wild Harvest Project
The wild harvest project was created in 2019 by SAI Platform and its members to bring together a sustainability assessment for use in wild harvest supply chains. In doing so, industry will be better aligned on sustainability goals and activities across supply chains that collect wild harvest ingredients. As a tool it will also improve transparency, facilitate engagement of wild harvest supply chains and bring to light important areas for improvement.
Using a similar approach to SAI Platform’s Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) this new toolset will complement the FSA for those companies using both conventional farming and wild harvest systems but can also be used as a stand-alone system.
For further information on this project contact Project Manager, Leah Bleahschmidt – lblechschmidt@saiplatform.org
