VIS (Valore Impresa Sostenibile) is a research-intervention project of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Piacenza, which aims at involving and accompanying companies and organisations of the cured meat supply chain in a path to deepen and develop knowledge and strategies for sustainability. The 30-month project also aims to effectively disseminate the knowledge developed to those directly involved (companies and trade associations) and to the communities affected by the supply chain’s activities (customers, citizens, institutions, third sector).
In order to help the companies involved to carry out an initial self-assessment of their sustainability strategies, the project proposes, as a first step, the filling in of a questionnaire designed and devised to investigate the main issues concerning the cured meat supply chain and to offer food for thought on the actions already in place and the planning of new actions by individual companies or from a supply chain perspective.
The questionnaire, developed from the Guidelines for Assessing the Sustainability of Food and Farming Systems (SAFA v3.0) drawn up by the FAO in July 2014, aims to support the assessment of the impact that companies in the supply chain can have on the environment and on people, and to orient strategies towards mitigating this impact. As with the SAFA Guidelines, the (self-)assessment system proposed by HIA is organised along the four dimensions of sustainability: governance (G), environment (E), economy (E) and social (S). It is evident that these dimensions are broad and encompass many aspects. Within the questionnaire, the dimensions are further specified and detailed through themes and sub-themes.
