Animal welfare
We care about animal welfare – and have long-sought to support the humane treatment of animals in agriculture.
We care about animal welfare – and have long-sought to support the humane treatment of animals in agriculture.
Although General Mills is primarily a plant-forward food company, with large businesses such as Cheerios and Nature Valley, we use some animal-derived ingredients and have long worked to support the humane treatment of animals in agriculture. This helps to ensure a resilient supply chain and aligns with our ambition to stand for good.
At General Mills we do not raise or handle livestock, but we aim to protect animals and work closely with our suppliers to do so. We regularly engage with stakeholders focused on animal health and welfare and leverage industry initiatives that advance livestock production. Our Animal Welfare Policy outlines our approach throughout the global supply chain for our retail food products, including:
To advance toward a more sustainable planet including animal welfare, we apply and work to achieve the “five freedoms” for all animals in our supply chain.
Freedom to engage in normal patterns of animal behavior.
Eggs are an important ingredient in many of our products, and we strive to ensure that the hens laying these eggs are treated humanely.
We aim to purchase 100 percent cage free- or free-range eggs for our operations globally. By the end of fiscal 2025, 84% of global egg purchases for our operations were cage-free or free-range.
General Mills supports the development of pregnant sow housing alternatives and has been communicating this support to suppliers over the years.
Our commitment has been, and remains, to source all of the pork we buy for our U.S. business from systems in which pregnant sows are held in gestation crates for a maximum of nine days per gestation cycle unless there are health reasons for further segregation from the group. In fiscal 2025, we maintained 100% progress against our commitment.
While we are committed to eliminating all use of gestation crates even beyond prolonged use to eventually reach zero days of gestation crate use per pregnancy cycle, we understand that there may be very limited occasions when keeping a sow isolated from others could be beneficial, such as for short-term medical procedures. In those limited instances, sows should be given enough room to turn around.
General Mills supports progress within the poultry industry toward a higher standard of animal welfare for broiler chickens. By higher standard, we mean birds that are:
The volume of our broiler chicken purchases represents less than 0.05% of the broiler market. Nevertheless, we have supported industry progress through several steps:
More information can be found in the Animal Welfare section of our Global Responsibility Report.
At the end of fiscal 2025, 4% of our contracted U.S. volume met these standards, and an additional 2% met all but the controlled atmosphere stunning standard.
