Increasing living standard in many developing markets increases the interest in and demand for dairy products. As stated in our Strategy 2020 Arla will focus on growing its business in a number of developing countries and developing markets to further strengthen our position as a global dairy company.
We regard ourselves as an active player in the communities in which we operate. This means that we need to convey our fundamental values not only to our employees and farmer owners but also to our customers, consumers and other relevant stakeholders.
We want to grow, but we care about how we do it.
Arla has operations across the world and acknowledges that it has a responsibility for managing our impacts on society, the environment and the people who interface directly or indirectly with our products and production. Our objective is to develop our business on a foundation of long-term perspectives with respect for, and in harmony with, our surroundings.
We conduct assessments of human rights
As part of Arla’s commitment to respecting human rights as outlined in the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights and our Human Rights Policy, we assess our human rights impact when establishing a presence in a new market. The purpose of these assessments is to identify and prevent as far as possible actual and potential adverse human rights effects caused by Arla’s business activities, in particular in developing countries. Furthermore, we want to understand which mitigation measures can be taken to contribute to the development of a sustainable local dairy sector and identify Arla’s potential role in these.
During July and August, 2015, we conducted Human Rights Assessments in Nigeria and Senegal. Click on the links below to read the reports.
We have used a combination of research methods to generate data, amongst which are desk-research; semi-structured interviews and discussions with government institutions, researchers, NGO’s, UN organisations, local dairy farmers, dairy businesses companies, Arla employees and business partners, general observations and field-visits to local milk producers.
The methodological framework, report-outline and process have been designed with support from The Danish Institute of Human Rights. However, it should be underlined that the conclusions are solely the responsibility of Arla Foods.
