China Mengniu Dairy

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities and the channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups. Furthermore, its stakeholder engagement covers nature, nutrition, and social issues.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company discloses some activities to achieve conversion-free supply chains, and is committed to restoring ecosystems.

GHG emissions
The company has a time-bound target to reduce its scope 1 and 2 emissions.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company discloses activities to improve soil health or agrobiodiversity in its production or sourcing practices.

Solid and air pollution
The company reports regularly on air quality parameters of emissions of harmful air pollutants. It also partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging.

Water
The company regularly reports on water pollution metrics, and reports a decrease in water pollution. The company demonstrates reducing water withdrawal in its own operations.

No leading practices were identified for the company in the social inclusion and community impact area.

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

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available statement of policy that expects its business relationships to commit to respecting the health and safety of their workers and discloses how it monitors the health and safety performance of its business relationships. Additionally, it has a public expectation that its business relationships shall not require workers to work more than 48 hours in a regular work week or 60 hours including overtime. Furthermore, it discloses the proportion of its total direct operations workforce for each employee category by age group and the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement expecting suppliers to respect the ILO core labour rights.

Lobbying
The company does not report on its lobbying and advocacy practices on nature-related issues, nor whether these activities align with its sustainability strategy.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company discloses some sustainability objectives/targets including climate. However, there is an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Also, while the company reports consistently against some targets including climate, it has an opportunity to report consistently against all its targets. Furthermore, it could link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover nature, including biodiversity, and social issues. Lastly, the company could improve its transparency by disclosing whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company does not have a commitment to ensure zero conversion. While the company has a target to achieve conversion-free supply chains, it does not report progress against it. Furthermore, the company does not disclose details and outcomes of ecosystem restoration projects in areas affected by its own operations or by its suppliers.

GHG emissions
The company should set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions as well as report progress against all its scope 1, 2 and 3 targets. Crucially, the company needs to reduce its scope 1,2 and 3 emissions and its targets need to align with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Impact and dependencies assessment
The company has an opportunity to disclose assessments of its impacts on nature, including biodiversity, within its own operations and in its supply chain. It also has the opportunity to disclose its dependencies on nature within its own operations and upstream business relationships.

Invasive species
The company has not identified any activities that could lead to the introduction of invasive alien species in its own operations.

Key areas and species
While the company has undertaken biodiversity surveys in the Ulan Buh Desert and identified several species in this region, it has yet to disclose species existing in or adjacent to its own operational sites. Additionally, although the company has produced biodiversity reports, it still needs to disclose the locations within or adjacent to important biodiversity areas for both its own operations and its suppliers. Further steps could also include revealing the status of identified species in alignment with national and international conservation lists.

Resource exploitation and circularity performance
The company has an opportunity to disclose its inputs according to an international standard, and to report quantitatively on its group-wide circularity performance. The company also has an opportunity to disclose a target to improve soil health in its production or sourcing practices and to report progress against it.

Solid and air pollution
The company does not disclose relevant information related to pollution in its operations or supply chains.

Water
The company has an opportunity to further improve water withdrawal by setting a time-bound target, disclosing water withdrawals in water-stressed areas, and engaging with suppliers.
The company has an opportunity to improve its disclosure on water quality management. The company does not disclose relevant information on rights to water in its operations or supply chains.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company does not show if it is committed to respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights or land rights of local communities.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
The company has an opportunity to commit to respecting local communities’ right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and to zero tolerance for acts of violence, threats, intimidation or judicial harassment committed against land and environmental rights defenders. Moreover, it should track its actual or potential negative impacts on the health of local communities.

Act ethically
While the company prohibits bribery and corruption, it has an opportunity to formalise this commitment in a public policy document. Furthermore, it could disclose its processes for identifying and addressing bribery and corruption and a grievance mechanism accessible to all stakeholders to raise bribery and corruption concerns and complaints without fear of reprisals. The company also has an opportunity to disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement 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, it could formalise this commitment in a public policy document.
Additionally, it could disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or state that it has achieved paying all workers a living wage. Also, the company has an opportunity to 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 although it expects suppliers to pay a legal 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 statement committing it to respect human rights and the fundamental rights at work declared by the ILO in its operations but has an opportunity to place it in a formal policy document.
Additionally, 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 although it conducts supply chain risk assessment. 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.