By Niki King – Director, Responsible Sourcing

At Campbell, our purpose is Real food that matters for life’s moments. We know that what we do every day matters and that families of all kinds rely on our foods. We make the biggest impact when we set and meet ambitious goals – as a business, and as good stewards of the natural resources we all share.

We believe real food should be prepared with care. It should be crafted using ethical sourcing and sustainable practices that safeguard the natural resources we all share. We recognize and share consumers’ concerns about the health and welfare of animals.

Campbell has made animal welfare a key part of our vision for an ethical and responsible supply chain, and we expect our suppliers to meet our requirements, while partnering with us to implement and execute more ambitious practices.

For the past several months I’ve been working with several key animal rights organizations to develop the next step in our Real Food Journey. Today, I’m pleased to announce that we are making a commitment to move our U.S. chicken meat supply to a higher standard of animal welfare. By 2024, we will aim to move our entire U.S. chicken meat supply to a higher standard of animal welfare. We’re committed to working with our suppliers to improve the treatment of broiler chickens by:

• Transitioning to strains of birds approved by Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) or the Global Animal Partnership (GAP) that are scientifically recognized as having higher welfare outcomes;
• Providing more space for chickens by reducing stocking density to a maximum of 6 lbs./sq. ft.;
• Offering improved environments including litter, lighting and enrichment that meet GAP’s new standards;
• Processing chickens in a manner that avoids pre-stun handling and instead uses multi-step controlled atmospheric stunning; and
• Using third party auditing to ensure compliance.

We’ll thoughtfully address the impact of this commitment on the farmers from which we source our ingredients. We will aspire to achieve these standards by 2024, but changes such as these are complicated and require time, investment, and partnership to succeed, and must align with our commitment to ensuring access to good, affordable food for our consumers.

Over the past two years, we’ve acted to provide consumers with more information about how its products are made through channels such as www.whatsinmyfood.com.

To view Campbell’s Animal Welfare Guidelines, including commitments to source 100 percent “No Antibiotic Ever (NAE)” chicken for diced and canned chicken products by 2018 and to transition to exclusive use of cage-free eggs, click here.

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