Corporate Responsibility

Environmental Sustainability

We are committed to reducing our environmental impact by creating smarter processes that generate less waste, reduce water usage and increase our use of carbon-free and renewable power. Leveraging our four principles of sustainability—compliance, communication, resource conservation, and continuous improvement—we are now able to measure and monitor our progress like never before.

We are proud of these significant accomplishments:

• Waste minimization — 94% of waste materials diverted from landfills due to Recycle, Reuse and Repurpose efforts.
• Water — 12.6% below our baseline in water consumption per unit of production, due to cleaning and reusing water at our facilities.
• Creative re-use — Using eggshells and potato trimmings as supplements in animal feed, and repurposing manure from our farms to create sustainable fertilizers.

Community

As a corporation and as individual volunteers, we’re proud to support the communities in which we do business—in powerful, life-changing ways including:

• Corporate giving — we donate food products and offer financial support to essential community organizations, including Hunger Solutions, Second Harvest Heartland and other food banks and community charities. Throughout the year we also offer the Matching Gift program for corporate employees and Grant Requests where company matches employee’s donation for approved organizations.  In addition to donations made through the corporate office, individual plants also give in their area.  We’ve helped put up houses and open daycares, making our communities around us stronger. 
• Volunteerism — our employees freely donate their time and talents to important community endeavors. From helping Special Olympics athletes realize their dreams to supporting United Way and its many crucial causes and events, to mentoring struggling students and at-risk youth, our team members are making a real difference in countless lives, every day.
• Employment leadership — we’re proud of our track record as a resourceful employer that creates exciting career opportunities for people in our communities, with wages and benefits that help them create better lives for themselves and their families.

Animal Well-Being

The Michael Foods team goes to great lengths to care for our hens. Using protocols that are strictly adhered to by everyone in our care chain, we’re optimizing the health and well-being of our laying hens with improvements to:

• Environment — Providing fresh air and proper lighting in a safe setting.
• Nutrition — Designing diets to meet each hen’s age-related needs.
• Disease Prevention —
  • On-site veterinarians oversee animal health and welfare and we have shared animal well-being expectations with all suppliers
  • Created an animal well-being advisory committee to create policies and programs that are ethically grounded, scientifically verified and economically viable.
  • Continuously work with internationally renowned experts on animal stockyards to ensure humane handling of animals in all facilities.

Get more details on our Animal Well-Being Page.