Our units in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Colombia and the Rosario unit in Argentina are certified by PAACO (Professional Animal Auditor Certification Organization), which follows the NAMI (North American Meat Institute) protocol. The average approval rate is 99.9%. In Australia, Colac and Sunshine units area certified in the Australian Livestock Processing Industry Animal Welfare Certification System – AAWCS, with a 100% compliance rate.
As for the value chain, part of our suppliers in Uruguay have the GAP – Global Animal Partnership certification, one of the largest North American animal welfare programs. After the appropriate management process for the protocol is implemented on the farms, there are third-party audits to certify compliance and the report made by the auditor still undergoes approval by the regulatory organization before certification is granted, which guarantees strict compliance with the protocol. More than 14,000 animals originated from certified farms in Uruguay in 2022.
In the last year, we achieved an important advancement in our evaluation in indexes and ratings regarding this topic. We advanced two tiers in the BBFAW (Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare) ranking, the main international evaluation of animal welfare and advanced from “high risk” to “medium risk”, with a percentage of 56% compliance in the “Animal Welfare” block ” from the Coller FAIRR market instrument. We are currently in Tier 3.