New investor collaboration on farm animal welfare

Seven institutional investors – Aviva Investors, BNP Paribas Investment Partners, Coller Capital, Ecclesiastical Investment Management, NEI Investments, Rathbone Greenbank Investments and Schroders – have announced that they intend to work together to encourage major global food companies to strengthen their management systems and processes on farm animal welfare.

The collaborative engagement will build on the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare’s annual review of how the world’s leading food companies are managing and reporting their farm animal welfare practices.

The third Benchmark report, launched in February 2015, evaluated 80 global food companies on their policies, governance, management processes and reporting on farm animal welfare. While 10 companies were considered to have made strong commitments to farm animal welfare and have well developed management systems and processes, 40 of the 80 provided little or no evidence that farm animal welfare was recognised as a business issue or that that the risks and opportunities associated with farm animal welfare were being effectively managed.

The seven institutions participating in the collaborative initiative, who have a combined total of over £980 billion in assets under management, will encourage the low ranking companies in the Benchmark to improve their farm animal welfare policies, practices and reporting. They will also write to the high ranking companies to commend them for their performance in the Benchmark.

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