Meat, poultry and eggs

In 2010, we made a deforestation-free commitment for our supply chains, stating that all of our products, globally, will not be associated with deforestation by 2020. For the last 10 years, we have worked on the ground to trace where our raw materials, including meat, come from to ensure they are not linked to deforestation. As of December 2020, 98% of the meat we buy for our Food Business (which excludes all byproducts from meat, poultry and eggs) was assessed as deforestation-free (pdf).

Our climate pledge to commit to net zero emissions by 2050 will push us to seek new innovations to offset and inset our emissions. This will include land restoration and conservation activities, sustainable grazing and feed origins and innovations to reduce carbon dioxide and methane emissions. We will work closely with our farmers to ensure feed for livestock comes from regenerative agricultural practices, avoiding deforestation and reducing associated carbon emissions. We will also help them invest in innovative technologies to improve on-farm operational efficiency.

Nestlé and its US supplier OSI Group are partnering to help scale sustainable grazing practices in Montana through a project run by regional nonprofit Western Sustainability Exchange and international carbon project developer NativeEnergy. The program, entitled the Montana Improved Grazing Project, began in late 2019. It will provide ranchers with the necessary educational resources and financial security to convert their practices, resulting in more productive lands, reduced input costs, increased rancher profitability and the delivery of real and measurable environmental results.

The support given through OSI Group and Nestlé’s partnership will help Western Sustainability Exchange achieve its goal of expanding the program to 200 000 acres of grasslands surrounding Yellowstone National Park. Under the direction of project implementer NativeEnergy, soil sampling and testing was performed in 2020 to establish the baseline of participating ranches and help build the US soil carbon data set. The data will be taken from soil sample analyses and modeled in the SNAPGRAZE soil model to estimate soil carbon levels across each ranch and adjust and improve the model across the region.

Nestlé is partnering with its supplier Golden State Foods to evaluate the effectiveness and application of the U.S. Beef Industry Sustainability Framework. This project evaluates the metrics developed by the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef by providing educational materials, training and follow-up surveys. 

The platform being used is the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture Extension’s Master Beef Program. Evaluative information will be gathered in each of the three years of the project: translating the metrics into effective educational materials, conducting county-level, multi-session trainings for up to 3000 producers and conducting follow-up surveys with participants and a state-wide forage land use survey.

We will ensure that chicken welfare standards for poultry used in all our food products in the US and Europe meet the criteria expectations set out in the European Broiler Ask/Better Chicken Commitment. By 2024 in the US and 2026 in Europe, we will move to one standard, based on a phased introduction.

The European Broiler Ask/Better Chicken Commitment requires that 100% of the chicken used in Nestlé food products must (by 2024/2026):

• Comply with all animal welfare laws and regulations, regardless of the country of production.
• Implement a maximum stocking density of 6 lb/sq feet (30 kg/m²) or less. Thinning is discouraged and, if practiced, must be limited to one thin per flock.
• Adopt breeds that demonstrate higher welfare outcomes.
• Adopt controlled atmospheric stunning using inert gas or multiphase systems, or effective electrical stunning without live inversion.
• Demonstrate compliance with the above standards via third-party auditing and annual public reporting on progress toward this commitment.

In 2020, we collaborated with our industry partners to bring this commitment to life.

Throughout 2019 and 2020, we collaborated with Koch Foods to compare the standard LED lighting programs currently used in broiler houses to a proposed natural lighting program. The study provides a side-by-side comparison of the effects of lighting sources on bird well-being and welfare. 

The conditions were evaluated by Professional Animal Auditor Certification Organization auditors as part of an animal welfare audit to ensure birds have space to express normal behaviors. Together with researchers from Auburn University/NPTC and Mississippi State University, the project provides insights on the well-being and welfare outcomes for broiler chickens under natural lighting.

We are looking to identify and assess opportunities for welfare improvements for other animals and will be developing new initiatives and solutions for other aspects of our meat, poultry and egg supply chain. Animal welfare matters to us and to our consumers, who expect affordable, high-quality foods without compromising on the well-being of animals.

In 2020, Nestlé initiated projects with suppliers to improve animal welfare, as outlined on this page.

Sow lameness represents a well-being and economic issue in swine production, and research is needed to address it at farm level. That is why we collaborated with US supplier CTI Foods and the National Pork Board to assess sow lameness, using new technologies that monitor pig health to increase early lameness detection and mitigation. Researchers from USDA ARS US Meat and Animal Research Center evaluated the sows and assessed foot and hoof lesion treatment as an earlier indicator of lameness. 

In addition to evaluating lameness, we also partnered with CTI and the National Pork Board to evaluate the efficacy of pain management after veterinary procedures. Pain management is a significant animal welfare issue, and there is a need to identify practical and effective analgesic solutions on-farm. In this project, researchers from Kansas State University studied the efficacy of pain management, the response of the pigs and monitored pig behavior.

We recognize and share stakeholders’ concerns about the welfare of animals raised for food and the need to ensure sustainable animal production systems. Through our Responsible Sourcing Standard (pdf, 2.4Mb), we are helping to bring about positive change.

This mandatory standard requires our suppliers of animal-derived raw materials to meet all applicable laws and regulations on animal welfare and to communicate this to their suppliers and farmers. The Nestlé Commitment on Farm Animal Welfare (pdf, 1.5Mb) sets out further ways to improve the health, care and welfare of the farm animals in our supply chain.

We are committed to eliminating from our global supply chain specific practices that are not consistent with the internationally accepted Five Freedoms:

• Freedom from hunger, thirst and malnutrition.
• Freedom from fear and distress.
• Freedom from physical and thermal discomfort.
• Freedom from pain, injury and disease.
• Freedom to express normal patterns of behavior.

Among the specific practices we have committed to eliminating are:

• Cattle: Dehorning, tail docking, disbudding and castration without anesthetic and analgesia, and veal crates.
• Pigs: Gestation crates, tail docking and surgical castration.
• Poultry and eggs: Cage systems, particularly barren cages, and rapid-growth practices that impact on animal health and welfare.
• Animal production systems in general: Our first focus is the responsible use of antibiotics, in line with the World Organisation for Animal Health’s (OIE) guidance and the phasing out of growth promoters.

We are currently prioritizing practices to be addressed and assessing how best to tackle them. We will also support the development and implementation of science-based international standards and guidelines by the (OIE).

In June 2018, Nestlé entered into a global partnership with Compassion in World Farming (CIWF). This helps define priorities to further improve farm animal welfare in the Nestlé supply chain, including sharing best practices and offering training. In 2018 and again in 2019, Nestlé and CIWF collaborated to provide this training on animal welfare to all Nestlé staff directly involved with meat, poultry and eggs.

In October 2018, Nestlé became one of the founding members of the Global Coalition for Animal Welfare (GCAW). Food service companies and food manufacturers are working together through the GCAW to advance animal welfare standards globally, including improving conditions for intensively reared livestock. In 2019, we continued as an active member of the GCAW, taking the lead on the discussion around cage-free eggs and how to transition to this production system. In 2020, we supported the development of a report on the local conditions and context needed for transitioning to cage-free egg production in China.

In recent years, we have contributed to the stakeholder consultation process on the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare, a global measure of animal welfare standards in food companies supported by the nonprofits World Animal Protection and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF). In the 2019 report (published in February 2020), Nestlé was recognized for its efforts to progress animal welfare and was ranked in the Tier 2 category for the first time, with animal welfare considered ‘integral to business strategy’. This is real progress on previous years when we were ranked as Tier 3 (‘established but work to be done’) and is mainly the result of greater transparency. Find out more about what Nestlé is doing to improve animal welfare on farms and through our dedicated Nestlé Farm Animal Welfare Q&A (pdf, 300Kb).

Our work to improve animal welfare was recognized externally in 2017, as our Herta brand in France received a Good Egg Award at the CIWF Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards.

We were also pleased to be awarded a Good Egg Award in 2018 by CIWF for our cage-free pledge in Europe.

In 2017 and 2018, we made three major poultry welfare pledges:

• We set a goal to purchase only cage-free eggs for all our food products globally by 2025. In Europe and the US, we set a target year of 2020 for this goal, a deadline that we have successfully met.
• We committed to higher welfare standards for broiler chickens (chickens raised for meat, rather than egg, production) in the US by 2024, including slower growth rates, better leg health and improved environments in line with Global Animal Partnership standards.
• In June 2018, we committed to higher welfare standards for broiler chickens in Europe by 2026, in line with the requirements of the Better Chicken Commitment.