Celebrating 20 years of progress towards the company’s sustainability goals, Smithfield Foods, Inc. released its 2021 Sustainability Impact Report.
“Since the genesis of our sustainability program in 2001, our unwavering commitment to continuous improvement has spurred extensive research and investments across our value chain that have led us to pioneer efforts addressing some of the greatest challenges and opportunities facing our industry,” said Shane Smith, president and CEO of Smithfield Foods in a recent release.
The ongoing initiatives are designed to create value across the vertically integrated company while supporting best practices in animal care, diversity equity and inclusion, environmental stewardship, food safety and quality, health and wellness, community development, and worker health and safety. The ongoing initiatives work to help the company shrink its environmental footprint and reach its carbon negative goals, explained the release.
In addition to many “first-ever” achievements in the progress towards Smithfield’s environmental goals, the company highlights its charitable contributions.
“Last year the company exceeded its charitable giving targets, donating nearly 775,000 servings of protein to its communities every week. To underscore its commitment to fighting food insecurity, the food company will double the goal it set in 2020 to donate 100 million servings of protein by 2025 to target donating 200 million servings over the same time period,” the release said.
The company also highlights its Unity & Action investment, including a new contract grower program to support minority farmers, its Operations Leadership Program and it set new workforce development goals to increase diversity of its leadership team by 2030.
A summary of the company’s 2021 sustainability highlights can be found here as well as its full 2021 Sustainability Impact Report.
