ANIMAL WELFARE
In Partnership With Our Farmers
OUR COMMITMENTS
As one of the UK’s leading dairy businesses, we’re proud to work with 130 contracted farmers who look after over 40,000 animals. Our farmers share our commitment to uphold high milk quality and animal welfare standards on farm. We aim to lead the way to a more sustainable future by embracing science, stewardship and technology in our journey.
OUR PROGRESS IN 2023
Our Sustain Programme launched in May 2023 and has two core components:
The Lactalis Development Group
This group brings our supplying farmers together to collaborate as a community and share the latest industry advancements. Our aim is to inspire our farmers and elevate standards through on-farm examples, workshops and webinars
Antibiotic Benchmarking
Mastitis management
Health and Safety courses
Cow Signals workshops
Register of Mobility Scorers (RoMS) accredited mobility training days
SOURCING STANDARD 2023
Our recently-updated Sourcing Standard helps to drive additional standards on farm.
In 2019, we published our first ever Sourcing Standard, intended to clearly set out areas of focus and key initiatives with our partnering farms such as carbon auditing, decreasing antibiotic usage, mobility and body condition scoring and the ban on bull calf euthanasia.
In the latest 2023 edition, we further build on the standards with the aim of delivering high standards of animal welfare, reduced carbon emissions and sustainable farm businesses.
OUR LACTALIS SOURCING STANDARDS
High-quality milk that’s free of antibiotics, produced and handled appropriately from farm to factory is fundamental to making our nutritious range of dairy products.
Our Sourcing Standards communicate our requirements to ensure our farmers share our commitment to high-quality milk, protecting the environment and providing the best care and treatment to their dairy cows. These are in addition to all of our farms being independently Red Tractor certified.
Our Sourcing Standards also align with Lactalis Group’s sustainability pillars covering four main themes:
PRODUCT QUALITY
Milk quality is monitored through robust sampling and testing covering composition, hygiene parameters and screening for the absence of antibiotic residues and other contaminants.
Animal Welfare
Our animal welfare policies revolve around the Five Freedoms which are globally recognised as the gold standard in animal welfare. The standards cover animal mental and physical well-being and are:
People Initatives
We’re committed to safe and regulated workplaces across our entire supply chain, including our partnering farms who are required to conduct health and safety audits and planning. We have taken a proactive approach to tackling hidden labour exploitation that’s underpinned by Modern Slavery legislation. All supplying farmers are expected to meet this legislation and act responsibly when employing labour, with permanent staff having a fair contract of employment.
Climate
We’re committed to driving the sustainability of our milk supply and encourage farm practices that protect the environment now and for the future. Farms participate in our carbon auditing programme to quantify GHG emissions and receive action steps to move towards a low carbon future.
SUSTAINABILITY PAYMENT
Our farmers share our commitment to high standards of animal welfare and protecting the environment, which is why in January 2024, we introduced a Sustainability Payment element to the price we pay for the milk we use in our cheese.
The Sustainability Payment rewards our farmers for participating in key initiatives which include:
Antibiotic Benchmarking
To maintain the effectiveness of antibiotics and limit the risk of the build-up of Antimicrobial Resistance, our farmers participate with an annual monitoring programme and consent to their vets sharing details about antibiotic use. Farmers and their vets discuss the results and implement preventative measures to reduce the amount of antibiotics used to manage herd health and welfare.
Carbon Footprint
Through carbon audits on our farms, we identify the steps each farmer can take to reduce greenhouse emissions. Qualified advisors make recommendations to reduce farm carbon footprints and we work with farmers to achieve our shared goal of a low carbon future.
Herd Health Plan
Herd Health Plans are an effective way of reducing antibiotic use on farm and monitoring herd health. These bespoke plans are created with the farms’ vets, and focus on preventative health measures including good biosecurity, hygiene, nutrition and vaccine use. Farmers are required to submit their plans and health performance information to us annually. This enables the collation of data on key welfare outcomes and allow us to monitor herd health across our farms.
The Lactalis Development Group
The Lactalis Development Group brings together our supplying farmers and to enables them to work together to share knowledge and best practice. To inspire and help elevate standards on farm through a collaborative approach we require our farmers to attend at least two of our development programme initiatives each year.
OUR FUTURE FOCUS
Biodiversity Baseline
We’re working with our farmers to create a biodiversity baseline. Once established, we will use this information to create our broader biodiversity strategy, this will be based on soil, water, habitats as well as birds, insects and wildlife.During the summer of 2024, we’ll pilot this across 8-10 farms and take learnings into a full roll-out in 2025 and beyond.
Development Groups
In 2024 we’re aiming to continue our Development Group work, tackling topics which are important for our farmers and support the wider Lactalis sustainability commitments.
On Farm Carbon Footprint
We’ll also continue working closely with our farmers to reduce on farm carbon footprints, share best practices and investigate emerging advancements in science and technologies.