See the details in our Company Stewardship Report.
Treating animals with respect means going beyond the minimum to keep animals healthy and to produce safe food. We view animal care as a journey of continuous improvement, evolving with advancements in animal husbandry and behavior, consumer questions and public concerns. This responsibility stretches across all of our raising programs and is shared by the farm families we trust to raise animals for us.
Our programs are designed so that we can raise animals in a reduced-stress environment where we don’t need to rely on human or animal antibiotics to keep them healthy, and we never use drugs for growth promotion or artificial growth promoters.
As part of its commitment to continuous improvement in animal care and welfare, Perdue Farms announced the following 10 new animal care initiatives for 2024.
100%of our chickens, cattle, hogs, cows and sheep are raised under no-antibiotics-ever protocols
100%of hog, cattle and lamb production are raised under third-party verified humane animal care
100%of animals are raised under documented responsible care protocols
100%of animals are
pre-harvest stunned
100%of raised turkeys and hogs are controlled atmosphere stunned
100%of farmers and associates handling live animals receive welfare training
57%of poultry houses have windows
37%of poultry have
enrichments
27%of poultry have
outdoor access
0growth-promoting
drugs
FREEToll-Free hotline number to report welfare violations
USDAProcess Verified Programs for
all poultry
Perdue Farms is committed to the routine avoidance of activities such as tail docking of pigs and cows, debeaking of chickens and toenail conditioning of turkeys. As of 2023:
At Perdue Farms, we recognize that providing animals with appropriate, species-specific environmental enrichments can improve their living conditions and help encourage their natural behaviors. As of 2023:
Perdue Farms is committed to the routine avoidance of activities such as tail docking of pigs and cows, debeaking of chickens and toenail conditioning of turkeys. As of July 2022:
Our objective is to ensure that all animal species, including chicken, turkey, pork, beef, dairy cows, and lamb, are rendered insensible prior to being harvested. As of July 2024:
Travel times for all poultry and livestock are kept to a minimum and our goal is to not exceed eight hours. As of 2023:
Our beef, lamb and pork programs are incorporating additional welfare outcome measurements, including a commitment to reduce lameness. Baselines, targeted improvements, and reporting will be established in the coming year.
*All species raised and sourced for Perdue Farms brands.
As part of our pledge "to be transparent in our programs, goal and progresses," we committed to share key animal care metrics, openly criticize ourselves when appropriate, and honestly and respectfully answer those who constructively criticize us.
As part of our commitment to transparency, we routinely invite people to tour our farms and plants. We encourage our farmers to be open to visitors within the constraints of biosecurity and business needs. Over the course of a year, a range of stakeholders, including retail and food service customers, media, advocacy groups, community members, students, and government representatives, visit our facilities. We track the number of tours by audience and have a goal to conduct 100 tours a year. Through August 2024, we have hosted 95 tours.
Working with farm families, we have established three on-farm Poultry Learning Centers. The family hosts guests for a transparent, interactive experience to learn about poultry farming and proper animal care. Built seamlessly into the side of a working chicken house, each learning center includes a large viewing room that allows guests to observe the birds undisturbed in their environment. Farmers explain what visitors are seeing inside the chicken house, as well as the timeline from when farmers receive the birds to how they raise and care for them. Guests can learn using actual poultry equipment that replicates what they see through the window, including mechanized feeders and waterers and automated temperature control technology.
The first viewing house opened in Kentucky in 2018. A second opened in Georgia in 2019. In early 2020, a third viewing farm in North Carolina opened for visitors.
To successfully improve our animal care programs, we need to bolster relationships with the farmers who raise our chickens. No one spends more time with our chickens then the people who raise them, and we value their insights. The following programs are designed to improve communication and help move us to our goal of the being the "Farmer’s Choice" for growing chickens. About 40 percent of the farmers who have shared their email addresses check in through our farmer website, making it easier for us to connect with them. Based on farmer feedback we have converted our farmer website into an APP. This allows a farmer to receive notifications on their farm when we update the site and have important information to share. We have seen an increase in usage since going live earlier this year. Our operations leaders continue to work toward overcommunicating.
Learn about the steps we're taking to reach our goal of becoming the most trusted name in food and agricultural products.
