Criteria for this audit are based on the “National Chicken Council Animal Welfare Guidelines” published by the National Chicken Council (updated in 2017 and PAACO certified) and “Poultry Slaughter Plant and Farm Audit: Critical Control Points for Bird Welfare, August 2005,” published by Temple Grandin, PHD, at www.grandin.com.
NutriSciences conducted annual audits at 11 of our poultry live production and harvesting operations, including hatchery, grow out (farms), catching and transportation, and processing. The audit covers a total of 67 audit points, scored on a scale of 1-5, for a maximum possible score of 335 points. Operations are rated on a percentage basis.
Our USDA Process Verified Program (updated continuously and PAACO certified) covers all our live-production and harvesting operations. The audit tool combines the principles from the National Chicken Council Animal Welfare Guidelines (updated 2022 and PAACO certified) and our best practices.
Participation in this program is approved by the Agricultural Marketing Service of the USDA. Companies that operate under a Process Verified Program must comply with criteria outlined in the program requirements and are audited annually. Since the AMS audits were developed using ISO 19001 Guides for Quality Management Systems audits, they are not“scored.” Instead, they identify nonconformances, which are classified as major and or minor.
The past year, the USDA Livestock, Poultry, and Seed Program’s Quality Assessment Division conducted annual audits in 8 of our 11 chicken live-production and harvesting operations for conformance to our USDA Process Verified Program Poultry Care. Each audit covers a minimum of 188 audit points in more than 50 areas. In 2022, we had two major nonconformances and 13 minor nonconformances with our PVP audits:
Some of our customers require Global Animal Partnership (GAP) certification, which applies to the farms raising chickens for those products. GAP certified farms are audited every 15 months.
Every farm raising organic chickens for us is third party audited for meeting the requirements of the National Organic Program for USDA Certified Organic. Farms are inspected annually by third party organic certifiers.
Our operations are regularly subject to audits by our customers to ensure adherence to their standards. We passed all customer audits.
We use third-party video monitoring in live-bird handling areas of all 11 of our harvest facilities. This includes random reviews of video covering 11.9 million birds in 269,900 audit events during 2022. We achieved a compliance rate of 99.87 percent.
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