Burger King ups animal welfare commitments, Ikea supports Indian families and plan B reaches South America
Burger King commits to cage-free by 2017
The new policy also mandates that Burger King suppliers stop using gestation crates for breeding pigs. These cramped crates are usually the same size as a sow’s body, preventing it from the smallest movement. HSUS calls gestation crates one of the cruellest practices in all of agribusiness. “With more than 70% of sows still in these crates in the US, we welcome this as an important step,” says Matthew Prescott of HSUS.
The company was one of the first in the food industry to use cage-free suppliers. However, given the enormous supply required to meet demand – Burger King uses hundreds of millions of eggs a year in the US alone – cage-free production still needs time to catch up, as it currently represents a mere 5% of the US egg market.
“For more than a decade, Burger King has demonstrated a commitment to animal welfare and, through our BK Positive Steps corporate responsibility programme, we continue to leverage our purchasing power to ensure the appropriate and proper treatment of animals by our vendors and suppliers,” says Jonathan Fitzpatrick, chief brand and operations officer of Burger King.
Ikea foundation supports women in India
In partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Ikea Foundation is expanding its support for children and their families in developing countries with a hefty €30m donation.
Specifically, the grant will fund women’s empowerment programmes in rural India, which are expected to reach 2.2 million women and their families in 20,000 villages.
This latest donation builds off the UNDP pilot programme Swaayam (Sanskrit for “self reliance”), which started two years ago in 500 villages in the northern region of India, and has helped thousands of women become entrepreneurs by cultivating their financial and business acumen.
The Ikea Foundation began funding women’s empowerment programmes in India and Pakistan in the 1990s as part of Ikea’s efforts to prevent child labour in its supply chain.
According to Jonathan Spampinato at the foundation, the programme evolved as Ingvar Kamprad, Ikea’s founder, and his management team chose to expand their philanthropic efforts to better address the root cause of child labour: poverty and poor education.
The foundation sees its support of the UNDP as a long-term commitment. “It is a powerful reality that when women are empowered, so are their children, their families and their entire communities, and that is why we care so much about finding ways to empower women,” Spampinato says.
B corporations fly south
The “B corporation” model of doing good while doing well has been exported to South America.
B corporations (derived from “benefit corporations”) are companies that have been certified by the US non-profit B Lab using rigorous criteria to assess their social and environmental impact. There are more than 500 certified B corporations across 60 different industries in the US, all of which share a mission to use market forces to tackle social and environmental problems.
The success of B corporations drew the interest of Juan Pablo Larenas, a Latin American economist, researcher and lecturer on social enterprise, who met with the B Corp founders and brought the model to South America, calling it Sistemas B. The organisation operates independently of B Corp, but has a licensing agreement to use B Lab’s certification scheme.
Larenas believes that the region is experiencing a unique economic boom, principally based on the exploitation of its natural resources (energy, minerals, water, biodiversity and land), which, he says, could lead South America down an uncertain and unsustainable path.
“At the same time, thoughtful management of this richness has the economic potential to differentiate the region as a superpower of environmental and social goods and services,” Larenas says.
Larenas has already seen growing interest in the Sistemas B business model. In three months alone, 50 companies in Chile have lined up to get certified. By 2015, Larenas hopes to certify 500 “empresas B” throughout Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia.
What Larenas hopes to see now is a growing, supportive environment to help Sistemas B flourish in South America. “We see a critical mass, but we need to build the ecosystem: more and better impact investors, public policies, regulatory frameworks, etc. The conviction of entrepreneurs is a necessary condition, but is not sufficient.”