Labeyrie Fine Foods

Sustainability strategy
Labeyrie Fine Foods 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 impacts of aquaculture
Labeyrie Fine Foods does not permit hormonal growth promoters and antibiotics as digestion enhancers or growth promoters. The company also works with the ASC certification, which requires that no antibiotics on the World Health Organization list of Critically Important Antimicrobials for Human Medicine be used. Labeyrie Fine Foods has a policy that addresses animal welfare issues (in its supply chain where relevant) and discloses its target that by 2025, it aims to source 100% of animal raw materials from suppliers committed to animal welfare, stating that it has already reached 97% in 2022. In addition, Labeyrie sources some of its products from farms certified by the ASC standard, which addresses issues of animal welfare.

Traceability systems and commitments for seafood products and aquaculture feed ingredients
Labeyrie Fine Foods has implemented blockchain traceability for its Norwegian salmon. Furthermore, the company reports that it is rolling out the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) standard in its shellfish portfolio.

Risk-based approach to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing
Labeyrie Fine Foods has developed an illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing risk assessment tool called LFF Risk Assessment Tool (RAT) which generates a quantifiable output for its supply chain and highlights areas where risk can be mitigated. The company explains the sources that are used in its tool to verify these risks. Based on the results, the company creates a phased or timebound action plan with suppliers to remove or mitigate the identified risks. To further improve on this topic, the company has an opportunity to provide additional information about the methodology and data used to conduct its IUU risk assessments, as well as sharing their outcomes.

Forced Labour
In its contractual arrangements with suppliers or supplier code of conduct, Labeyrie Fine Foods prohibits suppliers and any third-party recruitment intermediaries from imposing financia burdens on jobseekers and workers by collecting recruitment fees or related costs, and from retaining workers’ personal documents or restricting workers’ freedom of movement.

Respect human rights
Labeyrie Fine Foods has a grievance mechanism for workers and external individuals and communities to report human rights concerns and violations, through which they have a choice to remain anonymous or not.

Provide and promote decent work
Labeyrie Fine Foods has a publicly available statement of policy that expects its business relationships to commit to respecting the health and safety of their workers and that requires its workers to work no more than 48 hours in a regular work week or 60 hours including overtime. It also discloses one or more time-bound targets on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Act ethically
Labeyrie Fine Foods discloses a policy statement prohibiting bribery and corruption and has a supplier code of conduct that prohibits bribery and corruption, which states that its supplier contracts/relationships will or could be terminated as a result of breach of the code of conduct or bribery and corruption, signaling that it includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with suppliers.

Sustainability strategy
Labeyrie Fine Foods consistently reports progress against all the targets it has set, which include time-bound targets related to social inclusion and ecosystem conversion. However the company does not have a time-bound target for traceability.

Accountability for sustainability strategy
Labeyrie Fine Foods has several opportunities to increase accountability for its sustainability strategy. For example it can link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to its sustainability targets and objectives. Additionally, the company has an opportunity to disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Stakeholder engagement
Labeyrie Fine Foods has an opportunity to disclose the specific relevant issues that were raised by different groups of stakeholders as part of its stakeholder engagement activities. Although the company discloses that it has submitted a questionnaire to its internal and external stakeholders to identify the areas they would like to address as a priority, the company does not provide concrete information regarding the frequency and channels it uses to engage different types of stakeholders beyond its materiality assessment.

Lobbying and advocacy
Labeyrie Fine Foods has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its sustainability targets. Similarly, the company can increase its transparency efforts by reporting (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture
Labeyrie Fine Foods has a target to source 100% of their „strategic raw materials“ from certified sources by 2025, including MSC certification for some of its wild capture products and ASC certified for farmed shrimp. The company provides a progress report on this target. However, the company has an opportunity to improve by demonstrating an increase in the amount of certified seafood products since 2021.

Ecosystem impacts of fisheries
Labeyrie Fine Foods states that 100% of their wild salmon and cod supply is Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified. Additionally, the company actively engages in fishery improvement projects (FIPs) for sardines in Morocco, mackerel and herring in the North Atlantic, and curly tail ray fish in the English Channel. MSC and FIPs are means through which companies can the ecosystem impacts of fisheries. However, Labeyrie Fine Foods can further enhance its efforts by increasing the certified portion of its portfolio and by transparently disclosing the proportion per certification scheme vs. FIPs.

Traceability systems and commitments for seafood products and aquaculture feed ingredients
Labeyrie Fine Foods previously had a general commitment to traceability and had previously endorsed the GDST standards. Therefore it could strengthen its commitment by renewing its endorsement of the GDST standards and disclosing a time-bound target and action plan for implementation.

Disclosure of the source of seafood products and marine feed ingredients
Labeyrie Fine Foods does not publicly disclose information about the origin of its seafood products. The company thus has an opportunity to improve its performance by disclosing information about its seafood portfolio, including the location, species, or management status of the fisheries it sources from across its operations and supply chain.

Forced Labour
Labeyrie Fine Foods has an opportunity to 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 farmers and fishers’ income resilience.

Working and living conditions on board fishing vessels
Labeyrie Fine Foods has a group-wide code of conduct to meet certain standards for working and living conditions, but it does not specifically target working conditions on board fishing vessels. Additionally, the company does not publicly disclose how it verifies that these standards are being implemented. Labeyrie, therefore, has an opportunity to improve its performance by disclosing how it monitors working and living conditions on fishing vessels, disclosing the results of its monitoring, and demonstrating how it mitigates risks and implements improvements where needed.

Respect human rights
Labeyrie Fine Foods has an opportunity to make a public commitment to respect human rights in all its business activities, and place an expectation on its business relationships to do the same. It could also have a publicly available policy statement committing it to respecting the human rights that the ILO has declared to be fundamental rights at work, which is approved by the highest governance body. Regarding human rights due diligence, the company could disclose its processes to identify, assess and take action to address its human rights risks and impacts in its operations and supply chain, and how it engages with the stakeholders whose human rights are impacted.

Provide and promote decent work
Labeyrie Fine Foods could make a public commitment to respect the health and safety of workers, and disclose health and safety data in line with GRI 403-9 that includes the number and rate of fatalities as a result of work-related injuries, the number and rate of high-consequence work-related injuries (excluding fatalities), the main types of work-related injuries and the number of hours worked. The company has an opportunity to disclose evidence of a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or that it has achieved paying all workers a living wage, and how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates. It could also disclose the proportion of its total direct operations workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements and how it works to support the practices of its business relationships in relation to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

Act ethically
Labeyrie Fine Foods could take the opportunity to make its commitment to protecting personal data public in a policy document that is approved by the company’s highest governance body. It also could disclose a global tax strategy and the governance body or executive-level position is tasked with accountability for compliance with it, and disclose publicly the amount of corporate income tax paid for each tax jurisdiction where it is a resident for tax purposes. In terms of political engagement and lobbying disclosure, the company should publicly disclose its approach and that it does not make political contributions unless under specific circumstances. It could also discloses its expenditures on lobbying activities which is best practice.