The provenance and origin of the food we purchase is a key consideration for us. We require that food is purchased only from authorised suppliers. In 2009, we were awarded four more ‘Good Egg’ Awards, which are given by the leading farm animal welfare charity, Compassion in World Farming, to companies who source cage-free eggs, or are committed to do so by 2012. Our UK business uses 39 million eggs a year and, although the move to barn or free-range eggs is a complex process, we are actively working to encourage more sites to use only cage-free eggs and to increase our current participation rate of 27%.
Increasingly, we work with our suppliers to support national, regional and local sourcing initiatives and our UK business will source all of its fresh beef from Britain. They currently purchase more than 2,000 tonnes of fresh beef every year and spend in the region of £6 million per annum supplying their 7,000 sites.
In our 2008 CR Report, we reported details of the sustainable fish and seafood sourcing initiative led by our US team in partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The team has made significant progress during the course of 2009 and has exceeded its target by eliminating 1.5 million pounds of unsustainable seafood from our supply chain, with an overall purchasing rate of 70% sustainable products. In addition, it has removed nearly 300,000 pounds of Atlantic cod from the supply chain, decreased shrimp purchases by 835,000 pounds and unsustainable salmon by 49%, and increased sustainable seafood purchases by 5.5 million pounds. As part of their own sustainable fish programme, our Canadian business is in the process of moving over to wild salmon, thereby removing approximately 50,000 pounds of unsustainable farmed salmon from their menus each year. Finally, our UK and other European businesses have all made marked improvements in their drive to move to more sustainable sources of fish and seafood.
In 2009, in conjunction with key UK clients, we participated in the Supply Chain module of the Carbon Disclosure Project (‘CDP’), which is designed to measure carbon risks and liabilities through the supply chain. Feedback from this programme will be used to refine our environmental strategy in relation to the supply chain and further collaborate with our suppliers to achieve environmental efficiencies in our day-to-day operations.
