Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose Food and farming are of strategic importance for the future of biodiversity. Building on work by Townsend (2009) on general sustainability in zoos, this study aimed to assess the commitment to sustainable food procurement (SFP) among BIAZA members, comparing front-of-house (human) with back-of-house (animal) operations. It examined food purchasing practices and priorities, as well as the drivers of and barriers to these activities. Methodology A quantitative, cross-sectional approach was adopted, involving the use of a web-based questionnaire to gather relevant information from 41 BIAZA members. The questions in the survey were ordered to effectively meet the research objectives, with one section of the survey addressing human food and another section animal food. Findings Economic sustainability was found to be the highest scoring section of SFP, followed by environmental and then social. The overall levels of SFP were found to be equal for human and animal food operations. Nevertheless, numerous disparities between these two supply chains were found to exist for individual issues. In most cases, food procurement practices did not match food procurement priorities, with the exception of socially sustainable food procurement where there was an exact correlation. Statistically, levels of SFP were found to be significantly higher in charity zoos, zoos with accredited sustainability standards, and zoos whose human food operations were not contracted to external operators. Cost savings were identified as the most important driver of SFP, followed by adequate financial support and improved product quality. In terms of barriers, the three highest ranked issues were increased costs, other issues taking priority, and a lack of alternative suppliers. Practical implications Seven recommendations were made to improve the level of SFP within BIAZA. Internally, these included implementing policies and audits, ensuring consistency across all areas of zoo operations, and utilising food certification schemes. Externally, the recommendations involved engagement with food suppliers, partnerships for SFP, as well as higher standards for contracted food operators. Guidelines for self-assessment were also included to allow individual zoos to compare their SFP scores with the mean figures from the study. Originality/value The originality of this study lies in its comparison of two parallel but separate supply chains within zoos and aquariums. Also of relevance is the link between organisational values and purchasing activities. Keywords sustainable food procurement, zoos, food supply chains, values/action gap
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".