Sustainability progress report 2017 - 2020

Kering Animal Welfare Standards

Because We Care About Animals Too

If Luxury is the creation of beautiful products that are made with the highest standards of care, we all must extend this prerequisite to animal-based raw materials. At Kering, we’re implementing and verifying the highest standards of animal welfare across our supply chains.

In addition, we’re working to address any remaining issues around traceability, as this is one of the main challenges in the fashion industry and an obvious barrier to verifying animal welfare.

Since animal welfare is such a priority for us, we created the Kering Animal Welfare Standards in May 2019 for the Group’s suppliers at farms and at abattoirs. As the first-ever animal welfare standards for Luxury and fashion, we aim to call attention to animal welfare in fashion’s global supply chains, improve industry practices and catalyze collaboration. Consequently, we open-sourced the standards and shared them in order to provide a baseline of knowledge and awareness on animal welfare practices in the industry.

For the Kering Animal Welfare Standards, there were 8 species categories covered and developed with animal welfare experts and input from farmers and herders, who tested them on the ground in pilots in different regions around the world. Overall this included 82 farm visits in 16 countries.

We’ve been busy implementing these standards:

  • We’ve reduced sourcing from higher risk countries with supply chain investigation and due diligence in medium risk countries.
  • We started on the ground auditing for alignment with all the Kering Animal Welfare Standards: we have done this already for crocodilians and snakes, and for other species this is launching in Q1 2020.
  • As the majority of these animal-based supply chains prioritize the food industry, we also need to collaborate and work together to drive change: here we’re collaborating with NGOs like La fondation Nicolas-Hulot pour la nature et l'homme (FNH) and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) who are advocating for animal welfare in the food industry and at the EU level of government. We are also part of the round table on animal welfare with our Luxury and fashion peers through BSR’s ReLi and Paris Good Fashion. Furthermore, we are members of Southeast Asian Reptile Conservation Alliance (SARCA) and the International Crocodile Farmers Association (ICFA).
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