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Our Food Journey™ 2021 Report
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Jim Snee

We are proud of the progress we have made on Our Food Journey™ this past year and are excited to share our 16th report with you.

I want to take this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to our corporate citizenship and environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts. For over 130 years, we’ve been making a difference, with our people, in our communities and with our products. We do this by producing high-quality, safe, affordable and convenient food products while being an unwavering steward of the environment. We are on a mission with Our Food Journey™ — one that compels us to do our part every day to make the world a better place and to continue to raise the bar on our ESG efforts.

As part of Our Food Journey™, we strive to produce food responsibly for our customers and consumers around the world by focusing on three strategic pillars:

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

In 2021, we made excellent progress in several important areas that are covered in more detail in this report. Let me share a few highlights:

  • Surpassed Goals

    Our Updated Goals

    In 2021, we launched our updated set of corporate responsibility and ESG goals – our 20 By 30 Challenge. As part of Our Food Journey™, we have set 20 qualitative and quantitative goals and commitments to achieve by the end of 2030. Our new goals are based on a key topics assessment process that helps us identify and prioritize the issues most relevant to our business and our stakeholders. These goals also support the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

  • Wind

    Environmental Sustainability

    We initiated or completed several renewable energy wind and solar projects and are on track to have an approved science-based target for the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2023. We continued to reduce our GHG emissions, energy use, water use, solid waste sent to landfills and product packaging. We also assessed several regenerative agriculture projects, and our Applegate subsidiary launched the Applegate Naturals® Do Good Dog™ hot dog made with beef raised on verified regenerative U.S. grasslands.

  • Antibiotic Stewardship

    Animal Care And Antibiotic Stewardship

    We have developed industry-leading animal welfare standards for animal care and handling throughout our supply chain. To ensure our rigorous animal welfare standards are met, more than 2,300 audits were conducted in 2021.

    We continued our antibiotic stewardship work and published our first Antibiotic Stewardship Report in 2021, which provides comprehensive, detailed and transparent information about our antibiotic stewardship program and metrics from some of the farms in our supply chain.

  • New Acquisition

    Products, Nutrition And Acquisitions

    Producing safe, quality products to help feed the world inspires us every day. We introduced more than 400 innovative new retail and foodservice products throughout the year and achieved our goal to generate 15% of sales from innovative new items.* We also focused on efforts to reduce added sugars and sodium in our products and continued our clean-label initiative. We are always exploring ways to make our products even better, and that includes adding to our extensive brand portfolio.

    In June 2021, we announced the largest acquisition in our company’s history — the Planters® snack nuts business. This acquisition is providing a springboard to amplify our scale in the snacking and entertaining category.

  • Diversity

    Inclusion, Diversity And Safety

    Our inclusive culture empowers our inspired team members to be more innovative, collaborative and engaged. I am incredibly proud of the diversity reflected in our global team and in our actions in supporting our team members and their families.

    Equity in education has become an important effort at Hormel Foods. We pioneered a groundbreaking college degree program, Inspired Pathways, for the dependent children of our team members. The 2021-2022 academic year was the first year of this program. In 2021, we provided support to over 150 students. This included many first-generation college students.

    Safety First has always been an important Cultural Belief for Hormel Foods. In 2021, we continued to take heightened precautions to keep our team members safe due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we conducted safety training for an average of over 15,000 team members every month and completed approximately 1,000 safety assessments each month companywide.

  • Charitable Giving

    Charitable Giving

    Being a good corporate citizen means doing our part to support our communities and using our size and position to enrich the lives of others. In 2021, we contributed more than $8.5 million in cash and products to help others. This included $6.6 million in hunger-relief donations (or more than 8.4 million individual meals**), our donation of 2.1 million cans of SPAMMY® (a shelf-stable product to help prevent childhood malnutrition in Guatemala) and more than $960,000 to support educational institutions and our Inspired Pathways program students.

  • Lunch and Learn

    Food Security

    Hormel Foods has always been willing to take on tough issues and none is more challenging than food insecurity, certainly heightened by the pandemic. We have been focused on solutions to hunger in our communities for decades, but in 2021 we made a commitment to do even more. One of our 20 By 30 Challenge goals is to create a food-secure community program and to share our blueprint and findings globally, beginning in our hometown of Austin, Minn.

    This is not only an important company goal, but also a personal one too. In 2021, my wife, Tammy, and I supported the establishment of a first-of-its kind endowed faculty chair to focus on hunger and poverty at Baylor University. Craig Gundersen, renowned food security expert and professor of economics, was appointed as the first Snee Family Endowed Chair with the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty. Baylor University is a leader in this area and works closely with other colleges and universities, hunger nonprofits and the government to address food insecurity solutions.

These are just a few of our accomplishments in 2021. Thanks to the incredible efforts and dedication of our team members, partners and suppliers, Hormel Foods continues to make a difference. We are committed to continuing our mission to be one of the top corporate citizens in the world as we advance our efforts even more through our 20 By 30 Challenge.

Feeding people is an awesome responsibility; one that we take seriously. As a global branded food company, we understand the responsibility that comes with our size and scale, not only for consumers, employees and shareholders, but also to our customers and communities. Our 20,000 inspired team members are committed to Our Food Journey™, and we are confident we can continue to be a force for positive change in the world.

As you learn more about Our Food Journey™ by reading this report, please email sustainability@hormel.com to share any feedback you may have about our ESG efforts.

Thank you,

Jim Snee

Jim Snee
Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer

*Based on net sales for new items launched within the previous three years and the projected sales for items scheduled to launch in the next two years, divided by total reported sales for the year.
**Using the Feeding America estimates of $1 donated = 10 meals and 1.2 pounds donated = one meal.