Responsible sourcing
Our mission
“We’ll increase the sustainability credentials of our product range, with particular focus on plastics, palm oil, sustainable fishing and modern slavery.
We will meet the diverse and ever-increasing needs for products which will offer enhanced nutritional and dietary/allergen criteria, and do our part to help tackle obesity.”
Palm oil
Palm oil is widely used in food products due to its versatility, availability and price. Oil palm trees produce up to ten times more oil per hectare of land than other oil crops such as sunflower, rapeseed and soya. The production of palm oil helps to create employment in rural areas and in turn helps alleviate poverty. However, when palm oil is produced in a non-sustainable way, it can cause deforestation, loss of peatland and biodiversity loss.
At Bidfood, we aim to use 100% certified sustainable palm oil and its derivatives and are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). As an RSPO member, we share the responsibility for achieving the vision “a global partnership to make palm oil sustainable”.
We acknowledge that the environmental and social issues throughout the palm oil supply chain cannot be resolved by one stakeholder alone and therefore we are committed to the Shared Responsibility criteria as set out by the RSPO. These responsibilities relate to the topics of environment, land use, Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), human rights, complaints and grievances, information and outreach etc. Our compliance with the Shared Responsibility criteria is reported annually as part of our RSPO Annual Communication of Progress (ACOP) report.
Responsibly sourced soya
Soya is another commodity which is a driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss. It is widely used due to being a complete protein offering all essential amino acids, so is often made into food products like tofu, soy sauce and meat substitutes. Soybean meal is widely used as animal feed, and soybean oil represents 27% of worldwide vegetable oil production.
Our policy aims to avoid soya that causes deforestation and habitat conversion in our own brand products. We have completed a priority and risk assessment which helped us to gain the information required to set our policy. Our next steps will be to engage more closely with our suppliers to improve data and traceability of this commodity and work towards a verified DCF supply chain for both soya directly in our own brand products and for that embedded in the animal feed of our meat, dairy and egg ingredients. We are also keeping an eye on legislation and will ensure we align to this when further guidance is announced.
We are also working alongside other food businesses and organisations to help drive progress across the food industry, especially in the UK. We are members of the UK Roundtable on Sustainable Soya, are part of Efeca’s Foodservice Working Group and also attend their cross commodity roundtable events.
Our soya policy can be found here, and the case study on its development here.
Farm animal welfare
At Bidfood, the welfare of animals throughout our supply chain is important to us as well as our customers. We recently reviewed our own brand supply chain to assess our farm animal welfare policy and identify areas where this can be improved.
We identified that although many suppliers have animal welfare policies, the quality of these vary across suppliers, and supply chain visibility is limited especially in manufactured products. This has prompted us to set a target to work with our suppliers to improve visibility throughout our supply chain and ensure our own animal welfare policy is being effective. For some of our suppliers, this will be a huge challenge as they may have multiple sources of animal derived ingredients in their supply chain in small amounts, as well as be a number of tiers away from the abattoir, making visibility very difficult. We will engage closely with our suppliers to provide the support needed to progress towards our goal.
Cage free eggs
Bidfood is fully committed to the move towards cage-free eggs by 2025. This includes branded and own label shell eggs, liquid egg and eggs as ingredients in our own label products. We are in conversations with egg suppliers, as well as suppliers of products containing egg as an ingredient, to understand timelines for moving to cage-free supply by 2025 in order to achieve this aim.
Shell eggs
In FY2023/24 55.4% of all core range shell eggs sold, both branded and own-brand, came from cage-free egg systems. This is an 11% increase on last year’s amount of 44.1% of shell eggs sold being from cage-free hens. We are continuing to put a range of measures in place to achieve our commitment, which includes:
- Surveying our customers to clearly understand their cage-free egg preferences from 2025 so that we can ensure availability.
- Introducing barn eggs from January 2025. These eggs are cage-free and currently benefit from being cheaper than free-range eggs. Introducing these will help to offer our customers choice as well as improving availability of eggs as caged egg production continues to decrease.
- Taking action to raise awareness of cage-free eggs across our customer base
- Explaining the cage-free egg options available in our bi-monthly Marketplace magazine and other customer communications.
- Simplifying the way suppliers deliver eggs to us, opening doors for local suppliers to get their eggs to us.
Ingredient egg
We have recently analysed our products containing egg as an ingredient, and can report that in July 2024, 70.2% of our own brand products already contain eggs from cage-free hens. Of those products which don’t yet meet the commitment, 97% have agreed a roadmap to transitioning these products, and we are confident all our own brand products will meet our cage-free egg commitment in 2025.
Modern slavery
Modern slavery is a broad term used to encompass the offences of slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour and human trafficking. The term extends to slavery-like practices such as debt bondage, sale or exploitation of children and forced or servile marriage.
At Bidfood, we aim to build strong and loyal relationships with customers and suppliers, and raise awareness and understanding about modern slavery in the foodservice industry. We care about the welfare of workers in our supply chains and are committed to working towards higher ethical standards, better responsible sourcing practices and meeting our moral obligations to the community.
That’s why we’ve pledged to work with companies which are socially and environmentally responsible. To achieve this, we’re working closely with our own brand suppliers across every level of their supply chains, to understand the complexity of modern slavery and assess, review and strengthen current processes.
We are working with Sedex to remove modern slavery from our operations and supply chains, and part of this work includes exploring the on boarding of own brand suppliers which are still missing data. We have commenced a full scale review of our Modern Slavery Risk Assessment of own brand suppliers and decided on appropriate actions to take for branded suppliers, which has included a top level review of retailer and wholesaler modern slavery policies and statements available publically.
Responsible seafood sourcing
Responsible sourcing results in fish populations remaining healthy, with minimal impacts on the environment, ensuring supplies are safeguarded for future generations.
At Bidfood, all of our own brand fish and seafood is fully traceable back to the original source fishery or aquaculture source, including all stages of handling, processing and distribution.
Our sourcing decisions of wild caught fish and seafood for own brand and exclusive brands are based upon risk assessment, categorised as low, medium and high risk and based upon the ratings provided in the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) Good Fish Guide, which rates seafood from 1-5, based upon environmental sustainability. We require suppliers to source farmed seafood that has been independently certified to internationally recognised GSSI (Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative) standards and hold full chain of custody certification, where applicable
Bidfood is committed to sourcing fish and seafood responsibly, and are proud members of the Sustainable Seafood Coalition, aligning with the two voluntary codes of conduct
An updated version of our responsible seafood sourcing policy is being finalised.