Advancing nutrition and health

Raised without antibiotics

Our society is becoming increasingly concerned about the use of antibiotics in animal production, with alternative drug choices for the treatment of many bacterial infections becoming more limited, more expensive or non-existent. Maple Leaf is committed to minimizing or eliminating the use of antibiotics wherever possible, while maintaining high standards of animal care. We have become a leader in “raised without antibiotics” products across our branded, private label and foodservice portfolios in Canada and the United States. We will continue to expand our offerings to meet growing demand, through transitioning our own animal production operations and working closely with our contract pork and poultry suppliers.

Our food safety commitment

Our goal is to always provide consumers safe, great tasting food produced in a safe work environment.

• • We commit to becoming a global leader in food safety and job safety, and providing the focus and resources needed to achieve this goal.
  • We commit to establishing a culture of food safety and workplace safety with high-performance teams, where people are encouraged and expected to act on any concerns they may have.
  • We commit to measuring our safety performance, with testing and benchmarking against globally recognized standards.
  • We commit to behaving in the most responsible and transparent way possible, placing the safety of our people and our consumers first if there is ever a breach.

Our global food safety standards

We adhere to the Global Food Safety Initiative (“GFSI”) benchmarked standards across Maple Leaf. All of our facilities are audited annually by an internal food safety audit function and a third-party auditor, following the British Retail Consortium (“BRC”) Global Standard for Food Safety, which is recognized by the GFSI. All of our fresh and prepared meats facilities adhere to these standards.

We monitor the effectiveness of our efforts through aggressive testing of our products and manufacturing environment. In 2015, we conducted more than 225,000 tests to detect bacteria, including pathogens in our food processing facilities.

All companies that produce meat products for Maple Leaf must also commit in writing to our safety and quality standards. Currently, we have almost 60 co-manufacturers for our products, all of which are certified to GFSI-recognized standards.

In 2015, we announced that all our raw material suppliers will be required to meet GFSI requirements by the end of 2017, a leading best practice.

In addition to our active participation with GFSI globally and locally on the GFSI Technical Working Groups, the GFSI North American Local Group advisory board and the BRC advisory board, we have active leadership in other preeminent food safety organizations. We have been a Gold Sustaining Member of the International Association of Food Protection (the leading global food safety professional organization) for the past five years as well as a Sustaining Partner of the American Meat Science Association, which has a mission to improve food safety through scientific advancements.

Treating animals well

Maple Leaf has strong values that deeply define our culture and how we operate. These values have a very direct relationship to how we treat animals we raise or source. Treating animals well is one of our four sustainability priorities and reflects our goal to be a leader in animal care.
30,000 sows in open housing by 2017

See how animals are treated at Maple Leaf throughout our value chain