Resource information
Environmental and social responsibility
is becoming more and more important in todayapos;s global
economy. There are thousands of environmental and social
codes and standards in the world today. The codes and
standards define the rules and the objectives. But the
challenge is in the implementation. An environmental and
social management system (ESMS) helps companies to integrate
the rules and objectives into core business operations,
through a set of clearly defined, repeatable processes.
This Handbook is intended to be a practical guide to help
companies in the animal production industry develop and
implement an environmental and social management system,
which should help to improve overall operations. Some
people think that an environmental and social management
system must be big, complicated and expensive. But that is
not really true. To be effective, a management system needs
to be scaled to the nature and size of the company. If a
company has existing management systems for quality or
health and safety, this Handbook will help to expand them to
include environmental and social performance. Sections I
and II provide background on environmental and social
management systems (ESMS) in the animal production industry.
Section III provides step-by-step instructions on how to
develop and implement an ESMS. The ESMS Toolkit and Case
Studies section offers tools to help you develop and
implement the systems described in this Handbook, as well as
two case studies in the animal production industry that
implemented an ESMS. The Self-Assessment and Improvement
Guide offers tools to measure the maturity of an ESMS and to
develop a plan for improvement.
