Hormel Foods Shares Food Journey Progress in 12th Annual Corporate Responsibility Report

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Sep 05, 2018, 08:00 ET

AUSTIN, Minn., Sept. 5, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Hormel Foods Corporation (NYSE: HRL) today announced the launch of its 12^th annual corporate responsibility (CR) report. The report is available online at https://csr.hormelfoods.com/ and includes information about the company's CR progress in fiscal 2017.

The Hormel Foods 2017 Corporate Responsibility Report home page.

"We are proud of the progress we have made as a leading corporate citizen in our industry," said Jim Snee, chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer of Hormel Foods, in his letter in the report. "At Hormel Foods, we know that building social value and creating economic value are not competing goals, and we are inspired to do our part in making the world a better place. In fact, we continue to be recognized for our efforts. We were honored to once again be named as one of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens by Corporate Responsibility Magazine. In addition, we received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index and were named a Best for Vets Employer by Military Times."

Hormel Foods also recently launched its CR platform called Our Food Journey™. This journey consists of producing food responsibly for customers and consumers around the world by focusing on:

Investing in people and partners;
Improving communities around the world; and
Creating products that improve the lives of others.

Highlights of the company's progress in the report include:

After surpassing its goal to reduce solid waste sent to landfills and water use by 10 percent by 2020, Hormel Foods continued to implement projects to achieve further reductions. The company remains on track to achieve its goals to reduce nonrenewable energy use by 10 percent and product packaging by 25 million pounds by 2020.
In addition to reducing water use by 101 million gallons, Hormel Foods developed and published its Sustainable Agriculture Policy and completed a high-level water risk assessment of its top suppliers.
To ensure the accountability of its high standards for animal welfare throughout its supply chain, more than 2,000 audits were conducted. In addition, the company continued to advance its antibiotic stewardship efforts. These efforts consist of reducing the use of antibiotics, the responsible use of antibiotics, investing in producing raised-without-antibiotics products and working with others to create solutions through its Antibiotic Working Group.
Hormel Foods launched over 520 new retail and foodservice items and also continued to advance its sodium reduction efforts and clean-label initiative.
The company continues to place great emphasis on its diversity and inclusion efforts and has nine employee resource groups in place. Hormel Foods also continues to put the safety of its employees first by focusing on training, audits and improving its safety performance year over year.
Hormel Foods donated $7.8 million in cash and product donations to help others. This includes $5.4 million in hunger donations, its donation of 2.6 million cans of SPAMMY^® (a shelf-stable poultry product to help prevent childhood malnutrition in Guatemala), and more than $827,000 in education donations.

"I would like to thank all of our team members worldwide as well as our partners and suppliers, as it takes everyone working together to achieve these outstanding results," Snee said. "And while we celebrate these achievements, we realize there is more to accomplish on this journey."

The 2017 Hormel Foods Corporate Responsibility Report follows the Global Reporting Initiative's standards and is developed in accordance to the core option. The report is designed to allow stakeholders to easily view top-line highlights. A downloadable PDF will be available in the near future as well.

To view the entire report, please visit https://csr.hormelfoods.com/.

ABOUT HORMEL FOODS — Inspired People. Inspired Food.™
Hormel Foods Corporation, based in Austin, Minn., is a global branded food company with over $9 billion in annual revenues across more than 80 countries worldwide. Its brands include SKIPPY^®, SPAM^®, Hormel^® Natural Choice^®, Applegate^®, Justin's^®, Wholly Guacamole^®, Hormel^® Black Label^®, Columbus^® and more than 30 other beloved brands. The company is a member of the S&P 500 Index and the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats, was named one of "The 100 Best Corporate Citizens" by Corporate Responsibility Magazine for the tenth year in a row, and has received numerous other awards and accolades for its corporate responsibility and community service efforts. In 2016, the company celebrated its 125^th anniversary and announced its new vision for the future — Inspired People. Inspired Food.™ — focusing on its legacy of innovation. For more information, visit www.hormelfoods.com and http://csr.hormelfoods.com/.