Supply Chain Responsibility
Our commitment to promote and ensure responsible practices is evident throughout our supply chain.
Responsible Procurement
We cultivate long-term, mutually beneficial supplier relationships based on shared values, high standards and a strong commitment to responsible and sustainable management practices.
Managing and Sourcing Procurement
As a key aspect of our supply chain excellence strategies, responsible procurement is aligned with our Leprino Quality management system. We prioritize responsible sourcing and procurement by considering strategic significance, spend and associated risks. Our milk supply is our highest priority. We focus on these key areas:
Supplier assessment and evaluation
Supplier selection and verification follow our comprehensive policies and procedures, including our Supplier Code of Conduct. Critical areas of the assessment include quality and food safety and animal care for our milk supply. Suppliers receive our supplier expectations, and we monitor performance through reviews of a scorecard, audits and inspections.
Integrating Global Responsibility
We include sustainability considerations in our requests for proposals (RFPs) and requests for information (RFIs) to understand supplier commitments to sustainability and weighted factors based on environmental aspects, such as fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions.
Supporting supplier diversity
To promote a more inclusive and equitable economy, we support small and diverse businesses across our direct and indirect supplier networks. We have a formal supplier diversity policy, and we work to increase awareness of our program, improve reporting and help suppliers get certified. Our RFPs and RFIs include questions to identify vendors that meet our criteria.
To evaluate our progress, we set annual targets for growth in spend with small and/or diverse suppliers.
Our Performance
Percentage of Addressable Spend with Diverse Suppliers
Supplier Climate Pledge
A key part of Leprino’s climate action plan includes the Leprino Foods Supplier Climate Pledge Program. Our suppliers are pledging meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Animal Care in our dairy supply
Leprino Foods and the dairy farmers with whom we partner care about and are committed to the health and welfare of dairy cows.
Ensuring excellence in animal care
Healthy, comfortable cows that are well fed and cared for will always be the best and most productive source of milk. Leprino Foods and the great farmers we work with understand the benefit of humane animal care and the importance of upholding high standards in our dairy supply.
Our Leprino Quality Animal Care Program
Since 2016, we have maintained our requirement for 100% of our U.S. milk supply to comply with the Leprino Quality Animal Care (LQAC) Program, which requires all milk suppliers to meet world-leading animal care practices and commit to ongoing animal care education. The rigorous program ensures continued responsible behavior at the farm level through:
Enrollment in a designated animal care program
Milk suppliers in the U.S. must be enrolled in the National Dairy FARM (Farmers is Assuring Responsible Management) Animal Care Program. Sourcing all our U.S. milk from FARM-enrolled farms is also a term of our adoption of the U.S. Dairy Stewardship Commitment.
2023 Highlights
On-Farm Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Through continued effort, in 2023 we reached statistical signifiance for all of our on-farm GHG emissions. This represents an important step in progressing towards our value-chain GHG emissions targets.
