In February 2024, Standard Chartered, a multinational bank headquartered in the U.K. that primarily finances companies in Asia and Africa, strengthened its stance on animal welfare.
The FARMS Initiative welcomes the updated Agribusiness Position Statement from Standard Chartered which strengthens its existing restriction on financing confinement-based production. Previously, Standard Chartered would not finance producers using layer cages or caged rearing systems. With this update, Standard Chartered also excludes financing for producers using “gestation and farrowing crates for sows.”
Further, Standard Chartered specify that they will only provide financial services to clients who transport or slaughter livestock and poultry where the criteria of the FARMS Initiative Responsible Minimum Standards are implemented.
The policy also requires clients to follow the IFC Good Practice Note on Improving Animal Welfare in Livestock Operations, including the Five Freedoms of animal welfare.
Additionally, Standard Chartered now provides new best practice recommendations aimed at encouraging clients to:
· Refrain from prophylactic or routine use of antibiotics, unless no alternative is available.
· Implement the FARMS Initiative Responsible Minimum Standards on farm, including in Aquaculture
· Exotic leather has been added to the existing restriction on fur and angora wool
Standard Chartered points out that in agribusiness: ‘Key avoidable animal welfare risks arise from confinement of livestock and poultry in cages, painful and mutilating interventions without anaesthesia, irresponsible breeding techniques, excessively long transportation in cramped conditions, slaughter using unnecessarily painful or ineffective techniques, and where training and infrastructure are not designed with animal behaviour or welfare in mind."
The FARMS Initiative is pleased that Standard Chartered is taking these steps and urges others in the financial sector to require their clients to adopt confinement-free animal production and procurement, as well as implement the FARMS Initiative Responsible Minimum Standards on farm animal welfare, including in Aquaculture.