Perdue Farms

No leading practices were identified in the governance and strategy area.

Animal welfare
The company discloses evidence of processes of animal welfare third-party certifications or third-party audits. It also discloses a target that addresses animal welfare issues in its supply chain and reports progress against it.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company has policies and partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging.

Food safety
The company provides evidence that 100% of its own operations are certified to a Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI)-recognised food safety scheme.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company discloses that its poultry house contracts are designed to insulate farmers from most of the financial risks associated with raising chickens and turkeys. These contracts were developed with input from the farmers and they include provisions for peer review to resolve any issues between the company and the farmers. Moreover, it guarantees that farmers will have access to a competitive local market for their row crops.

Act ethically
The company has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect human rights and indicates it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to strengthen its sustainability governance and accountability by designating an individual or body to implement its sustainability strategy and by assigning decision-making and oversight to its highest governance body. While it discloses a remuneration policy related to environmental goals, it could further link this policy to improvement in nature-related objectives and social issues. Additionally, it could disclose if the highest governance body has expertise in its most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to report on its lobbying and advocacy practices on sustainability-related issues, and whether these activities align with its sustainability strategy.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to disclose how it engages with stakeholders, the issues raised during such activities, and the outcomes of its stakeholder engagement.

Sustainable development strategy
The company has an opportunity to disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts. While the company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate and water, it could establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Moreover, while reports against some targets including water, solid waste and climate, it has an opportunity to report consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has an opportunity to disclose reductions in Scope 1 and 2 and Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, and set time-bound targets aligned with the Paris agreement’s 1.5 degree pathway.

Animal welfare
The company has an opportunity to set animal welfare targets applicable to all species, geographies and products.

Antibiotic use and growth promoting substances
The company has an opportunity to disclose targets to phase out the prophylactic use of antibiotics across all species, geographies and products, and report progress against them.

Food loss and waste
The company has an opportunity to disclose its food loss and waste (FLW) reduction targets and report progress against these targets. Additionally, it can consider aligning its FLW reduction goal with SDG12.3, which aims for a 50% reduction by 2030.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company has an opportunity to disclose quantitative evidence regarding plastic use reduction and use of sustainable packaging.

Protein diversification
The company has an opportunity to set a sales-based target to increase alternative proteins across its portfolio, as well as report progress against this target.

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to enhance its disclosures relating to water use and withdrawal.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment and commercial activities to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company provides examples of reformulated products. However, there is potential for improvement in reporting its overall efforts to reduce sugar, salt, and fat, and/or increase the presence of positive nutrients in its entire portfolio. Additionally, there is an opportunity for the company to establish nutrition criteria and to set a sales-based target to increase the proportion of more nutritious products.

Clear and transparent labelling
The company has an opportunity to disclose how it provides nutritional information on its products and how it supports consumers with making healthy food choices through its labelling schemes.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to disclose the percentage of food suppliers certified to a GFSI-recognised food safety scheme.

Responsible marketing
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment to responsible marketing and its marketing activities to promote healthy food options.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to prohibit child labour in its supply chain and an age-verification system for its value chain. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some regions or commodities.

Land rights
The company has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights. Furthermore, it could describe a process at its operations and supply chain level to identify legitimate tenure rightsholders when acquiring, leasing or making other arrangements to use land and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Living wage
The company has an opportunity to set a target for paying a living wage across its direct suppliers and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it sources. Also, it could disclose the percentage of workers across its own operations or suppliers that are paid a living wage.

Act ethically
The company has an opportunity to disclose its processes for identifying and addressing bribery and corruption and specifies that a grievance mechanism allows stakeholders to raise related concerns. It also could disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement beyond a personal level in a public policy document and state that it does not make political contributions and divulge its lobbying expenditures.

Provide and promote decent work
While the company states that it respects the health and safety of workers for its operations and supply chain, it could formalise this commitment in a public policy document and provide evidence of how it monitors its suppliers’ performance on health and safety standards covering its entire supply chain.

Additionally, although the company is committed to paying a legal wage and expects the same for its suppliers, it has an opportunity to disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or state that it has achieved paying all workers a living wage. It could also describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates and how it works to support its suppliers in paying a living wage.

Furthermore, the company could commit to gender equality and women’s empowerment and disclose related targets. It could also disclose the representation of women on the highest governance body and the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect specific workers’ rights but has an opportunity to reference all the ILO fundamental rights at work in its operations and supply chain.

Additionally, while the company conducts a supply chain due diligence, it could describe a comprehensive process for assessing and identifying human rights risks and impacts across all its activities and supply chain, and its salient human rights issues. It could also specify what it considers to be salient human rights issues, how relevant factors are considered such as geographical, economic and social factors, and how it acts to prevent, mitigate or remediate its salient human rights issues through a global system.