Treating everyone fairly

Being fair and honest and caring for people and the communities in which we operate is just as important to us as being ever mindful of nature's resources and the environment.

At Birds Eye, this is what we mean when we say we work hard to conduct our business in a legal and socially responsible manner. This applies to all our products that are either manufactured locally or in communities further afield.

Over the next few pages we hope you will see how we work to ensure ethical sourcing practices are maintained across our business operations and how we communicate our nutritional standards in a clear manner to help you make informed choices when buying our food.

We hear a lot about ethical sourcing. It means finding the components for our products and our manufacturing processes - our ingredients, packaging, resources and equipment - in a socially responsible manner, whenever and wherever it's possible to do so.

To achieve that, we want to make sure that our global supply chain works to help, not hinder, the lives of people who are touched by our business. We want to raise economic standards in developing communities, deterring exploitation and abuse.

That's why we're members of SEDEX - an organisation dedicated to helping businesses like ours make continuous improvements in the ethical performance of supply chains - and we encourage our suppliers to treat and pay their workers fairly, and give them acceptable work/life practices.

We've also adopted the Ethical Trade Initiative's Base Code which sets out ethically agreed labour principles. It aims to secure workers' rights to things like safety and hygiene; fair pay and working conditions; no discrimination and regular employment. Where the Business Social Compliance Initiative has higher qualifying standards than those of the Ethical Trade Initiative, we adopt those instead.

You asked us:

What does Sustainable Development Mean to Birds Eye?

Sustainable development is most commonly defined as meeting the needs of the present without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. That's why we're calling our programme 'Forever Food', we're making sure that the way we produce food for consumers today will allow our children and children's children to harvest the Earth's food resources as well.