Nestlé has signed a partnership agreement with World Animal Protection (WAP), which will require Nestlé's suppliers to comply with WAP's animal welfare standards. According to the Nestlé press release Aug. 21, the agreement will impose stricter animal welfare standards at all farms that supply Nestle with dairy, meat, poultry and egg products.

The announcement comes just eight months after pizza-making company DiGiorno, a Nestle property,cut ties with a Wisconsin dairy accused of animal rights abuses. An undercover video released by Mercy for Animals in December 2013 showed workers abusing cows at Weise Brothers Farms near Green Bay, Wisconsin.

The new Nestlé Commitment on Farm Animal Welfare (PDF, 1.4MB) recognizes the "Five Freedoms" of animals: freedom from hunger, thirst and malnutrition, freedom from fear and distress, freedom from physical and thermal discomfort, freedom from pain, injury and disease and freedom to express normal patterns of behavior.

For cattle, Nestlé wants suppliers to stop "dehorning, tail docking, disbudding and castration without anesthetic and analgesia, veal crates (and) permanent tethering." Nestlé's general guidelines for livestock will focus on "the responsible use of antibiotics, in line with (World Organization for Animal Health)'s guidance, and the phasing out of the use of growth promoters."

Nestlé's guidelines reference the World Organization for Animal Health's Terrestrial Animal Health Code, chapter 6.9, which requires antimicrobial agents to be used only under a veterinarian's prescription, even as a feed additive. PD

—Summarized by Progressive Dairyman staff from cited sources