By 2050, the global population is expected to reach nine billion people. How can we feed everyone and guarantee high levels of food safety and nutrition, without depleting our natural resources? It is a challenge that must be addressed at all stages of the supply chain.
What we are doing
We take responsibility to maintain the highest levels of safety for our products, while also improving their environmental and social footprints. Diving deep into our supply chain helps us ensure that our products are more sustainable from production to plate.
Our main focus is on our own-brand products. We work to ensure they are safe, produced in clean, efficient facilities with good working conditions, made from sustainably sourced commodities, and clearly and accurately labeled. To drive global food safety and social and environmental sustainability, we take an active role in various standards committees and working groups.
We support the Consumer Goods Forum’s (CGF) Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) standards to advance the safety of food products. We take an active role in the CGF’s Social Steering Committee to drive impactful change in the fight against forced labor and are a signatory of the CGF resolution to fight forced labor.
As member of the CGF’s Environmental Sustainability Committee, we help drive and communicate environmental sustainability improvements throughout the value chain of the consumer goods industry. We are represented on the Board of Governors and working group of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and are on the Board of the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI), which provides clarity on credible seafood standards. In addition, we are part of the Retailers Palm Oil Group (RPOG) and Retailers Soy Group (RSG); a group of European retailers working together pre-competitively on the challenging topics of palm oil and soy.
As a member of the UTZ Standards Committee, we help develop and maintain the highest standards for sustainable production of coffee, cocoa and tea.
The journey to safety, social and environmental compliance is complex. Nevertheless, for 2020, we strive to achieve:
- Safety compliance: 100% of our own-brand food products GFSI-certified, or compliant with an acceptable level of assurance standard.
- Social compliance: 80% of suppliers of our own-brand products in high risk countries audited against an acceptable standard, with a valid audit report or certificate indicating their compliance on all ‘deal-breaker’ issues; remaining suppliers (20%) will be audited to ‘stepping stone’ standards or with audit in process.
- Commodities: 100% of our own-brand tea, coffee, cocoa, palm oil, soy, wood fibers and seafood certified against an acceptable standard.
For more details please see our reporting page.
Our suppliers are spread all over the world and have different challenges when it comes to food safety, social compliance and sustainability. With the Ahold Delhaize Better Together strategy, we are more prepared to tackle this challenge, building on the food safety, social compliance and sustainability expertise of two major companies now acting as one. By advancing food safety and sustainability, we contribute to our better place to shop and better neighbor promises.