Dairy giant China Mengniu Dairy is prioritizing the protection of biodiversity in its sustainable development strategy and exploring ways of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, its senior executive said.

Lu Minfang, CEO of Mengniu, said at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, Yunnan province, that people from around the world should join hands to eliminate hunger and malnutrition while also building a carbon-neutral food industry to protect humanity and the planet.

During the conference, Mengniu released a report on biodiversity revealing the company's top priority to "eco-friendly and green development and benchmarked the United Nations' Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Carbon neutrality

Mengniu responds to China's dual carbon goals and promotes the entire industry chain toward carbon neutrality. The dairy sector has the longest industrial chain in the food industry, and the pressure on carbon reduction in livestock, processing and logistics is significant.

As a leading company in the industry, Mengniu has the courage to take the lead.

It has established a three-level management system ranging from the group company to its business units and factories, and carried out carbon investigation, carbon emission reduction and carbon compensation for ranches and factories. It also explored a carbon neutral path for the entire industry chain.

A few days ago, Mengniu made a solemn promise to take the lead in the industry to achieve carbon neutrality and said it will announce carbon neutrality goals, paths and plans in 2022.

Creating milk source oasis

Milk is the source of life for the dairy industry. Therefore, the implementation of ecological conservation and preservation of milk source areas is not only crucial for Mengniu to provide high-quality dairy products and achieve sustainable development, but also the proper way to protect the environment and biodiversity.

In 2009, Mengniu joined hands with its animal husbandry companies to carry out large-scale ecological management of the Ulan Buh deserts.

Over the past 12 years, the company has invested more than 7.5 billion yuan ($1.16 billion) in funds, planted 97 million trees and greened more than 200 square kilometers of deserts, creating a global organic recycling chain of sand grass and turning deserts into pure and sacred land for milk sourcing.

This project was also selected into the Corporate Carbon Neutrality Roadmap of the United Nations Global Compact.

Sustainable planting and breeding

Mengniu has innovated pasture technologies to build ecological pastures and smart pastures. It has also promoted the utilization of manure and other resources, realized the recycling of pasture resources and improved the productivity and resilience of the production system through the sustainable use of biodiversity resources.

Mengniu has promoted animal welfare and healthy breeding activities, from psychological welfare, behavior welfare, environmental welfare, health welfare and physiological welfare, to allow dairy cows to grow healthily.

Data show that in 2020, Mengniu's farm inspection pass rate was 100 percent and 70 percent of its cooperative farms have implemented healthy farming operations.

Green production, sales and transportation

In the production, packaging, storage and transportation links, Mengniu practices environmentally friendly operation in line with the green principle in its design, products, production and restoration of nature.

Mengniu's factory strictly controls the three industrial wastes, applies green packaging materials and digital storage and transportation, and reduces the impact on biodiversity and ecosystems in the industrial chain.

To date, Mengniu has built 17 national-level green factories. Among them, the Wuhan production base adopts the most advanced international concepts and technologies to build an eco-friendly and forest-style dairy benchmark factory.

This summer, the clean and beautiful environment of the base attracted many egret birds to play.

Protecting the homeland

Mengniu, together with its employees, partners, consumers and other stakeholders, is committed to making the protection of biodiversity a consensus of the whole society.

Bellamy's, a subsidiary of Mengniu, recently announced that it will carry out Blue Planet biodiversity conservation public welfare activities, by creating more education bases, and encouraging more members of the public to raise awareness of species protection and participate in biodiversity conservation.

Lu Minfang, CEO of Mengniu, shares his views on biodiversity at the closing ceremony of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, Yunnan province.