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 chickens, turkeys, 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
55%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 avoidance of confinement through all species. As of July 2022:
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 July 2022:
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 2022:
Travel times for all poultry and livestock are kept to a minimum and our goal is to not exceed eight hours. As of July 2022:
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. We conducted 117 tours in 2023.
Perdue Farms is partnering with social media active farmers to help increase their visibility and share their stories with more people. Five Perdue Farms family farmers — Kenny Young (@KennyYoung K T Young Farm), Laura Landis (@WorthTheWaitFarm), Val Nasir (@ followvalsflock), Tara Green (@greengatefar-mers_wife) and Bobbi Jo Webber(@Webber-FamilyFarm) — are creating social media content including educational pieces about raising chickens as well as stories about their history, farms, families and animals. They are passionate about farming, rais-ing animals thoughtfully and always going the extra mile to produce a better tasting product, and enjoy educating their followers on social media about their work and what it takes to feed America.
By using the hashtags #PerdueProud and #PerdueFarms_FarmerAdvocate, their posts are shared across Perdue’s social media properties, enlightening Perdue Farms’ followers and reaching a wider audience for their information.
The farmers periodically receive product samples from multiple Perdue brands for fun unboxing videos, as well as product bundles and gift certificates to help engage their audiences. Look for our farmer advocates on all the Perdue social channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.
As part of Perdue’s commitment to transparency, three on-farm Poultry Learning Centers in partnership with families in Georgia, Kentucky, and North Carolina, are providing interactive experiences to learn about various aspects of poultry farming and proper animal care.
At these educational facilities, the family hosts guests of all ages for a transparent, interactive experience to learn about various aspects of 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.
Educational videos explain what visitors see inside the chicken house, as well as the timeline from when farmers receive the birds to how they raise and care for them while they are on the farm. Additionally, guests have the opportunity for hands-on learning using actual poultry equipment that replicates what they see through the window, including mechanized feeders and waterers and automated temperature-control technology.
Stephen Brake, a second-generation poultry farmer in Pinetops, N.C., has hosted more than 3,000 students for
tours on his farm, and the interest in learning more is only growing.
The success of the education center, which officially opened its doors in 2020, was on display in early 2024 as Steven was joined by state and local government officials, academic partners, and Perdue to celebrate an expansion – a new, fully integrated classroom and bathroom and shower facilities – that will allow the farm to accept larger
groups traveling from further distances.
Steven hopes that the education center can continue to drive transparency about the poultry industry while also
showing students of all ages where their food comes from, hopefully inspiring some future farmers along the way.
“For agriculture to succeed in this digital age and beyond, we must come together as farmers and do more
outreach to the public, advocating for our industry and teaching the next generation,” he said.
And, at the end of the day, he shares what makes it worth the incredible effort he and the team have put into the
education center. “When a student who’s been through her comes up and says, ‘you changed my life,’ that is worth more than any dollar can ever mean.”
Strengthening relationships with our farmers is one of four pillars of our Commitments to Animal Care poultry program.
In 2016, we created Farmer Councils in each of our poultry live production areas – broilers, breeders and turkey – to share information and receive feedback.
Since then, 20 percent of our farmers have participated in the Farmer Council process. Councils meet for four hours every six months to discuss how we can be the farmers’ choice to supply them with birds. Our focus is to understand their business from their perspective – a key learning opportunity that is mutually beneficial.
Learn about the steps we're taking to reach our goal of becoming the most trusted name in food and agricultural products.
