Whitbread receives Good Egg Award for animal welfare commitment
Compassion in World Farming has awarded Whitbread, the UK’s largest hospitality company, a Good Egg Award for the company’s commitment to use cage-free whole eggs across all brands by 2020.
Compassion’s ‘Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards’ recognise and celebrate the achievements of leading retailers, manufacturers and food service companies for making tangible improvements to the welfare of the animals reared for food in their supply chains.
In the EU, there are over 360 million laying hens kept for egg production every year, with around 38 million of these in the UK. Over 50% of these hens are confined in cages. The Good Egg Award recognises companies that use cage-free eggs or egg products and to date more than 53 million laying hens are set to benefit each year from the Good Egg Award winners’ policies and practices.
Dr Tracey Jones, Director of Food Business at Compassion in World Farming commented: “I am delighted that Whitbread has joined the cage-free movement with their commitment to cage-free shell eggs (by 2020) as well as ingredient egg (by 2025), for all their brands in the UK and Germany. I hope that their commitment will be a catalyst for others to follow their example.
“Compassion will continue to work with Whitbread and the food industry at large to ensure the production system changes required to go cage-free will offer the hens a good quality of life in rich and stimulating environments.”
Rosana Elias, Responsible Sourcing Manager, Whitbread said, “At Premier Inn our guests like to enjoy a great breakfast after a good night’s sleep. Of course, eggs are an important part of our breakfast offer and we believe we have a very real responsibility to make sure all the ingredients are sourced in a responsible and ethical way. We are committed to ensuring high levels of animal welfare across our supply chain and the Good Egg award is a great recognition of that commitment in action.”
Whitbread PLC is the owner of the UK’s favourite hotel chain, Premier Inn and the UK’s favourite coffee shop, Costa, as well as restaurant brands, Beefeater, Brewers Fayre and Table Table.
Whitbread PLC employs around 50,000 people in over 2,200* outlets across the UK, with its well-loved brands making every day experiences special for over 27 million UK customers every month.
Whitbread has ambitious growth plans to increase the number of Premier Inn UK rooms to around 85,000 and to achieve global system sales of around £2.5bn for Costa by 2020.
At Whitbread we are committed to being a force for good in the communities in which we operate. Our CR programme, ‘Good Together’ is focused on three pillars of Team & Communities, Customer Wellbeing and Energy & Environment.
In the year ended 3 March 2016, Whitbread PLC reported a 12% increase in Group Revenue to £2,921 million and Underlying Profit before tax of £546.3 million up 11.9%.
Whitbread PLC is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100. It is also a member of the FTSE4Good Index.
*excludes Costa Franchise stores and Costa Express
Animal Welfare and sustainable sourcing progress reporting for 2017
