Animal welfare

We care about animal welfare – and have long-sought to support the humane treatment of animals in agriculture.
In this section:

2025 Global Responsibility Report (PDF)

Animal welfare policy

Although General Mills is primarily a plant-forward food company, with large businesses such as Cheerios and Nature Valley, we use some animal-derived ingredients and have long worked to support the humane treatment of animals in agriculture. This helps to ensure a resilient supply chain and aligns with our ambition to stand for good.

At General Mills we do not raise or handle livestock, but we aim to protect animals and work closely with our suppliers to do so. We regularly engage with stakeholders focused on animal health and welfare and leverage industry initiatives that advance livestock production. Our Animal Welfare Policy outlines our approach throughout the global supply chain for our food products, including:

Advancing Common Principles

To advance toward a more sustainable planet including animal welfare, we apply and work to achieve the “five freedoms” for all animals in our supply chain.

  1. Freedom from hunger, thirst, and malnutrition.
  2. Freedom from discomfort.
  3. Freedom from pain, injury, and disease.
  4. Freedom from fear and distress.
  5. Freedom to engage in normal patterns of animal behavior.

Focused Efforts

Egg production

Eggs are an important ingredient in many of our products, and we strive to ensure that the hens laying these eggs are treated humanely.

We aim to purchase 100 percent cage free- or free-range eggs for our operations globally by 2025. 

Milk production

General Mills encourages all suppliers in our dairy supply chain to support industry-wide efforts that promote the humane treatment of cattle, including responsible polled breeding practices. Until dehorning is eliminated, General Mills supports the adoption of best management practices, including procedure timing and use of analgesics and/or anesthetics.

All the fluid milk we source in the U.S. for Yoplait comes from co-ops whose member farms participate in the National Milk Producers Federation animal care program (Farmers Assuring Responsible Management). The program comprehensively addresses dairy cow care, including standards for proper pain relief and disbudding, and prohibits the routine use of tail docking. The FARM standards are revised on a three-year cycle starting with a review by a technical committee composed of veterinarians and animal care experts.

Pork production

General Mills supports the development of pregnant sow housing alternatives and has been communicating this support to suppliers over the years.

Our commitment has been, and remains, to source all of the pork we buy for our U.S. business from systems in which pregnant sows are held in gestation crates for a maximum of nine days per gestation cycle unless there are health reasons for further segregation from the group. In Fiscal 2024, we achieved 100% progress against our commitment.

While we are committed to eliminating all use of gestation crates even beyond prolonged use to eventually reach zero days of gestation crate use per pregnancy cycle, we understand that there may be very limited occasions when keeping a sow isolated from others could be beneficial, such as for short-term medical procedures. In those limited instances, sows should be given enough room to turn around.

Poultry

General Mills supports progress within the poultry industry toward a higher standard of animal welfare for broiler chickens. By higher standard, we mean birds that are:

  1. Raised with more space (a stocking density of 6 lbs/ft² or less).
  2. Raised with litter, lighting, and enrichment that meets Global Animal Partnership (GAP) standards.
  3. Processed using controlled-atmospheric stunning from breeds accepted by Global Animal Partnership (GAP) or the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).

The volume of our broiler chicken purchases represents less than 0.05% of the broiler market. Nevertheless, we have supported industry progress through several steps:

  1. Enacted new governance processes across all our animal welfare commitments (see above).
  2. Engaged current and prospective suppliers to assess their ability to support us in this journey, including site visits to prospective supply locations.
  3. Onboarded alternate suppliers who are further along in adoption of these standards.
  4. Contracted for chicken that meets these standards, working through verification and quality testing.
  5. Explored how our Regenerative Agriculture ambition could help further a paradigm shift in farm animal well-being. For example:
  6. We are continuing to invest in research on the benefits of pastured poultry production by partnering with North Carolina State University to commission a study comparing pastured and conventional poultry production systems. The literature review and study intend to understand outcomes across animal welfare and management, microbiology and food safety, and meat quality.
  7. We have also provided funding to the Regenerative Agricultural Alliance, which seeks to codify the benefits of having chickens acting in their natural roles within ecosystems. Learnings from this work will help inform our approach moving forward.
  8. More information on this can be found in the Animal Welfare section of our Global Responsibility Report.

At the end of calendar year 2024, 4% of our contracted U.S. volume met these standards, and an additional 1% met all but the controlled atmosphere stunning standard. 

Related:

Antibiotics and hormones

General Mills agrees with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that judicious use of medically important antibiotic drugs can help preserve the effectiveness of these drugs as therapies for humans and animals. For that reason, we do not support routine use of antibiotic drugs to promote growth in livestock, and believe such drugs should be used only as necessary and appropriate to maintain the health of animals.

In accordance with US regulations, General Mills does not support the use of hormones in the raising of hogs or poultry.

Animal testing

General Mills does not conduct, support or condone the use of animal testing that is not legally required for food safety or quality. We do not maintain any testing facilities. Where governmental agencies require animal testing to demonstrate safety or quality, studies are completed by accredited third-party facilities that follow proper animal welfare guidelines. We are advocates for replacing animal testing with other validated methods to support the safety and quality of new food ingredients and have financially supported research to develop alternative methods.

2025 Global Responsibility Report (PDF)