Cooke

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

No leading practices were identified in the ecosystems area.

No leading practices were identified in the traceability area.

No leading practices were identified in the social responsibility area.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has a publicly available policy statement in which it commits to respecting the health and safety of workers.

Sustainability strategy
Cooke has an opportunity to disclose its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability topics and impacts.

Accountability for sustainability strategy
Cooke has an opportunity to report on sustainability accountability within its governance structure.

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

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

Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture
Cooke demonstrates a clear commitment to sustainable seafood. However, the company has an opportunity to disclose specific targets for sustainable seafood that encompass its entire portfolio and report progress towards achieving these targets.

Ecosystem impacts of fisheries
Cooke’s subsidiary, Omega Protein, which is involved in Atlantic Menhaden fishery, was officially certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard in 2019. However, the company has an opportunity to continue to increase the percentage of its portfolio that is certified and to provide additional quantitative disclosure regarding the progress made in implementing activities addressing ecosystem impacts.

Ecosystem impacts of aquaculture
Whilst Cooke provides some information on disease management, specifically regarding sea lice, the company could enhance transparency by disclosing additional details about outbreaks, medicine usage, and disease management plans in its aquaculture operations. Moreover, Cooke does not currently disclose its efforts to promote sustainable aquaculture practices in both its operations and supply chains. To enhance performance, the company should provide insights into how it addresses crucial issues in aquaculture, such as antibiotic use, aquaculture feed practices, and animal welfare.

Traceability systems and commitments for seafood products and aquaculture feed ingredients
Whilst Cooke has a general commitment to traceability across all its operations, the company has an opportunity to disclose further information about how it traces and verifies the origins of seafood products. The company can improve in this area by clearly presenting its traceability system, including which key data elements that are collected and the mechanisms used to verify the information along the supply chain.

Risk-based approach to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing
Cooke sources from one fishery that is certified to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard, which help mitigate the IUU risks in that specific fisheries. However, the company has an opportunity to demonstrate it has an IUU risk assessment tool in place and report on how it deals with identified risks, if any.

Disclosure of the source of seafood products and marine feed ingredients
Cooke has an opportunity to increase the transparency regarding the sourcing of its seafood products by disclosing an overview of its seafood operations and the source of its seafood products a, including information about species, geographic location, and management status.

Forced Labour
Cooke has an opportunity to disclose forced labour requirements for its operations and supply chain such as a prohibition to pay recruitment fees, to retain workers’ personal documents or to restrict workers’ freedom of movement. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some commodities and regions. Also, it could adopt procurement practices and develop supply chain relationships that improve fisher and farmers’ income resilience.

Working and living conditions on board fishing vessels
Cooke has an opportunity to improve its performance by making a commitment to ensure decent working and living conditions on board fishing vessels. By demonstrating how they address and mitigate risks, as well as implementing improvements where needed, Cooke can play a positive role in enhancing working conditions and ensuring responsible practices within the industry.

Respect human rights
Cooke has an opportunity to disclose a policy statement committing it to respect human rights and the human rights that the ILO has declared to be fundamental rights at work in its operations and supply chain. Additionally, the company could describe a comprehensive process for identifying human rights risks and impacts across all its activities, including its suppliers. It could give a description of a process for assessing and identifying what it considers to be its salient human rights issues, how relevant factors are considered, such as geographical, economic and social factors.  The company could also disclose a global system to act on its salient human rights issues by preventing, mitigating or remediating the latter.

Provide and promote decent work
Cooke has an opportunity to disclose a policy commitment to respecting the health and safety of workers for supply chain and it could provide evidence of how it monitors its suppliers’ performance on health and safety standards. Furthermore, the company could disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or that it has achieved paying all workers a living wage and describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates. The company could also disclose how it works to support the payment of a living wage by its suppliers. Moreover, 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.

Act ethically
Cooke has an opportunity to disclose a policy on bribery and corruption and include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contractual agreements with business relationships. Furthermore, it could disclose its processes for identifying and addressing bribery and corruption and a grievance mechanism allowing stakeholders to raise related concerns. 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.