Animal Welfare Management
The commitment to ensuring animal welfare is among the priorities of JBS' global agenda, respecting the demands of customers, consumers and society and the precepts of valuing life. The health and safety of the animals is always a priority.
The Company’s operations are benchmarked to best practices and, are in line with the five fundamental freedoms of animals, as defined by the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC).
The Company creates partnerships with producers around the world to ensure they abide by this agenda, while also maintaining specialized species-specific teams that adopt constantly revised techniques and encourage producers to provide the animals with the best treatment.
JBS has teams specialized in each animal species and adopts techniques that are constantly enhanced according to the best market practices in the theme.
The production plants are frequently audited by domestic and international customers, who check criteria on sanitation, quality, Animal Welfare, traceability, nutrition, among others in their checking process.
JBS has an animal welfare program‑established in its production chain.
In addition, JBS has an Animal Welfare Committee, responsible for establishing guidelines that improve the Animal Welfare Policies adopted, consisting of representatives from the corporate areas of Sustainability, Quality, Agriculture and Industry,among other members.
In 2019, this same committee created the JBS Animal Welfare Seal as a means of strengthening the commitment of the entire company to this issue via a single identity.
JBS commissions an independent annual audit of its Responsible Procurement Policy and publishes the results of this process on its site. A check is made as to whether the properties of its cattle suppliers abide by the socioenvironmental criteria stipulated in its Responsible Raw Material Procurement Policy.
The best practices in Animal Welfare are closely related to the success of JBS’s operations. For this reason, the work routines follow the humanitarian slaughter principles. This is a fundamental aspect for the Company, which addresses the topic with extreme strictness. In addition to conventional slaughter, the company performs ritual slaughters, specific to some markets.
In Brazil, the company has a Corporate Animal Welfare Committee responsible for evaluating and discussing key issues for the business to ensure the continuous improvement of AW at the units and involving the issues that are strategic for the company. The committee describes the procedures and implements the necessary controls throughout the entire production chain to ensure that animal welfare is being properly maintained. It is also the space where the strategies for informing and engaging the team members on the topic are discussed.
To ensure care throughout the value chain, the practices and initiatives adopted are focused on three moments:
Own animal breeding and in raw material suppliers
Animal transportation
Pre-production and production
