A Tidy Cleanup of Scope 3 Pork Emissions

Maple Leaf Foods, the Canadian prepared meats giant, is spinning off its pork division.

The target audience of Prairie Routes Research is investors outside of agriculture and food that are concerned about the risks of deploying capital into companies whose claims and internal processes they can’t see or validate. By explaining the complex internal workings of supply chains, the intent is to help the general public understand marketing claims vis-a-vis structural efforts for reaching stated ESG commitments.

It’s impossible to predict the future outcome on share prices of the latest fudgery by Maple Leaf Foods in spinning off a new pork company. Certainly, it will have some work to do to meet new securities reporting requirements, now that it’s fully responsible for what was about half of Maple Leaf Foods’ total supply chain emissions.

Context

According to Food Business News, Maple Leaf Foods will retain 19.9% of a new pork company that will also be publicly traded. It makes one wonder, is 20% the threshold that is expected to force shareholders to include that business’s Scope 3 emissions in public reporting?

In January 2023, executive chair of Maple Leaf Foods Michael McCain provided strategic details about the company’s emissions reduction commitments on CBC’s The Current. Listen here how their Scope 3 basically all stem from fertilizer applied to feedgrains fed to hogs and methane from the manure produced in the barns, and that the company would use regenerative agriculture and anaerobic digestion to reverse their impact.