Sodexo's commitments to improving animal welfare fit firmly into our responsible sourcing strategy as part of our work on sustainable agriculture. Our framework supports our corporate responsibility roadmap, Better Tomorrow 2025, and the needs of our clients. As we continue to advance our approach, periodic updates regarding our progress and processes are an important aspect of demonstrating our commitment.

Today’s update includes metrics that demonstrate that:

  1. Sodexo is on track to meet our virtually 100% cage-free egg goal by October of this year,
  2. Sodexo is progressing on the creation of our roadmap on broiler chicken welfare improvements, and
  3. Sodexo is a year ahead of schedule on our pork commitment for 100% free-to-roam systems with increased gestation crate-free product.


Our dedication to transparency includes openly discussing the challenges we face in achieving our goals. The backbone of our reporting will continue to be the annual process of a full year’s data, independently audited by a third party. However, more frequent updates like this throughout the year will provide further transparency in our progress.

As we continue down the path to meeting our commitments, please see our updates in three critical areas: cage-free eggs, broiler chicken welfare improvements and gestation crate-free use in pork production.

 

Cage-Free Eggs

In October 2022, we committed to reporting our progress and more specific projections to demonstrate the impact of our dedication toward our 100% cage-free goal. As stated above, we are on track to meet that goal by October of this year.

In January 2023, we reported that we were working internally and with our supply chain partners (including manufacturers and distributors) to ensure better stocking and controls regarding cage-free eggs. Since then, and despite the challenges of avian flu impacts, we have seen an improvement of our monthly metric; our overall cage-free figure for March was 83.9%.

The impact on our 12-month rolling metric aggregates previous months with our recent progress, so the impact isn’t as dramatic on that metric. As of the end of March, the 12-month rolling metric was 79.3%.

While this is good progress, we have more work to do.  We have established a monthly review of root cause areas, and as we address bigger impact areas, we start to understand some of the smaller impact areas that need different actions. 

We will continue with quarterly updates that will include monthly figures as well as the 12-month rolling metric, so that the direct impact of our actions is demonstrated.

 

Broiler Chicken Welfare Improvements

In relation to Sodexo’s continued commitment to improve the welfare of broiler chickens through the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC), we have outlined our roadmap and will detail the interim steps in the coming months. Our collective work through the Compassion in World Farming's U.S. Working Group for Broiler Welfare and direct engagement with our suppliers has helped us determine timelines for the different components.  

Our road map will have the following deadlines by component:


Stocking density, breed and CAS are all complicated areas of change for the industry, and it is extremely important to work collaboratively.  The changes necessary for these components have multiple factors at play, including: capital investment, availability of technology, additional climate impacts, research and innovation.    

For each of these, we continue to work with our suppliers to detail the interim goals and, as part of our annual reporting cycle (published in July), we will track and report according to this roadmap.  In addition to our collaborative work with Compassion in World Farming on the Better Chicken Commitment, we also have been actively engaged in the broiler chicken work group with the Global Coalition on Animal Welfare (GCAW). The working group recently published some of their work in GCAW Recommendation on the Use of Welfare Outcome Measures for Broiler Chickens.

 

Gestation Crate Use in Pork Production

As announced in our January 2023 update, we are now working to add gestation crate-free products from Clemens Food Group to our supply chain as a component of our goal for 100% free-to-roam systems (which includes group-housed/reduced gestation crate and gestation crate-free) by the end of 2024, a full year earlier than previously committed. In March, we achieved 5.8% for crate-free and 62.9% for all free-to-roam pork.  Similar to eggs, this aggregates with previous months and starts to impact our rolling 12-month metrics, which as of the end of March were 5.3% crate-free and 59.7% for free-to-roam. 

View additional information on our Animal Welfare and Responsible Sourcing approach.

 

Page Last Updated: May 1, 2023