Modern Slavery Statement
Overview
Our mission at Lily’s Kitchen is to make proper food for pets. We produce premium natural food for cats and dogs, including wet and dry recipes and treats. Made with love and full of delicious, nutritious and wholesome ingredients, we believe diet is key to ensuring pets are healthy and happy, inside and out.
At the heart of Lily’s Kitchen is our Paw Print for Progress: an approach to our business which aims to benefit pets, people, and the planet. We are committed to doing the right thing, taking responsibility and making a positive difference, especially when it comes to the people who work to make Lily’s Kitchen a success. We want to make sure that we do what we can to treat people and the planet kindly, while also doing our bit to make the world a better place – however small our contribution.
This statement is our response to the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 and outlines our position on workers’ rights and modern slavery. It applies to all parts of our business, and we encourage all our business partners and suppliers to uphold these principles and to adopt similar approaches within their businesses.
1. About Us
1.1 Inspired by Lily
Lily's Kitchen was named after and created for a very special border terrier, Lily. When she developed a skin condition and conventional treatments did little to improve her illness, our founder Henrietta decided to try nursing Lily back to health with proper, nutritious, home-cooked meals. Lily soon recovered and Henrietta set to work. Along with the help of vets and pet nutritionists, Henrietta created some special recipes using natural, wholesome ingredients. Food she was happy to feed Lily and happy to recommend to others.
1.2 Our business and supply chains
Today, we make many more recipes but follow the same principles as when Henrietta first started. We use proper meat and offal, and vibrant fruit and veg to make our recipes for dogs and cats. You won’t find meat meal or rendered meat, but you will find a lot of love. After all, pets are family! We want to do the very best we can for them.
We also want to do the very best we can for our people, those in our office and in our supply chain. We believe in being transparent with our customers. We hold B Corp certification, meaning we use business as a force for good, paying special attention to our workers, governance, the community around us, our customers and the environment. Lily’s Kitchen is proud to be one of the founding members of B Corp in the UK, as well as the first pet food company in the world to certify as a B Corporation. We’re part of the B Corp community because we believe in using business as a force for good.
Lily’s Kitchen works with an outsourced supply chain, meaning that the farms which grow our ingredients and the factories which prepare our recipes are independently owned. Our ingredients are sourced globally, and we make every effort to source these ingredients as locally as possible, depending on seasonal availability.
We recognise that we have a responsibility to prevent modern slavery and human trafficking both within our business and our supply chain, and we take this responsibility seriously. In our work so far, we’ve seen no evidence of either modern slavery or human trafficking within our business, supply chains or the supply chains of our suppliers. But we know that this issue is extensive and very often concealed, so we’ll continue to focus on protecting and respecting all the people involved in making our proper food.
2. Our Policies
2.1 Internal policies
Lily’s Kitchen prides itself in going above and beyond the standard business requirements for employers. Our employment principles are guided by international human rights standards, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Labour Organisation’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and the United Nations Global Compact. We are committed to fostering open and inclusive workplaces that are based upon recognised worker and human rights, where all employees and partners are valued, engaged and respected in line with our corporate values.
To keep our people safe and protected at work, we have a number of different policies that everyone signs-up to as a Lily’s Kitchen employee. These policies are available for all Lily’s Kitchen employees to access at any time they are required.
We have an employee code of business conduct, a Health & Safety policy and procedures, recruitment guidelines, disciplinary guidelines, grievance procedures and a whistleblowing policy with an associated external helpline. Staff are encouraged to report any suspected wrongdoing confidentially and anonymously through this whistleblowing helpline, including human rights violations such as modern slavery or human trafficking. All reports are recorded, and issues raised are tracked and monitored. All information is then recorded within our annual Impact Report.
In addition to these policies, in 2020 we set-up our first Modern Slavery Working Group. This group come together at least twice a year to review our business processes and define goals which will help us to further improve our approach to human rights.
2.2 Our supply chain policies
We expect that the businesses that we work with will meet the same standards that we set for our own business. As such, all of our key suppliers have agreed contracts which include meeting the standards outlined within our Supplier Code of Conduct. This includes commitments to comply to local, national and international standards (whichever is strongest) related to child labour, forced labour, harassment and disciplinary procedures, discrimination, freedom of association & collective bargaining, wages and benefits, working hours and health and safety. We’re working on extending this to 100% of our suppliers, no matter the size, during 2023.
3. Assessing and managing risk
3.1 Working with our supply chain
At Lily’s Kitchen, we’re committed to implementing responsible sourcing principles and assessment across our supply chain. We expect each employee and supplier to conduct all business activities with integrity and according to the letter, spirit and intent of all applicable laws.
Before Lily’s Kitchen starts working with any new suppliers, we audit the company to ensure that it is acting in compliance with local employment legislation and our Supplier Code of Conduct. This audit is also completed every year for our existing suppliers by our trained in-house auditors.
If we identify that a supplier’s practices do not meet our standards, we will work with the supplier in question to achieve compliance, or this could lead to us terminating our relationship with them. We reserve the right not to work with any supplier who does not adhere to our principles.
The farms and suppliers we work with comply with relevant EU, UK and/or local legislation from farm to bowl.
4. Training
All Lily’s Kitchen employees are made aware of all policies and procedures, including this statement on our approach to Modern Slavery. As part of our onboarding process, staff are provided with training on the risk of modern slavery within the company’s supply chain, and how to escalate concerns through our whistle blowing policy.
Every employee of Lily’s Kitchen is expected to adhere to all UK employment laws and to uphold all relevant workers’ rights as outlined above, and is aware of this responsibility. Staff failing to do this may face disciplinary action which could result in immediate suspension or termination of employment.
5. Our Next Steps
As we said at the beginning of this statement, we know that we have work to do to combat modern slavery, and we will continue to focus on this throughout 2023. During the next year as part of a broader stakeholder engagement and materiality assessment project, we’ll be working on a set of Key Performance Indicators for our work on human rights and modern slavery, including an extension to our auditing programme. We plan to share this in our next statement to use as the basis for our reporting going forwards.
6. Feedback
Modern Slavery is a serious issue and one which Lily’s Kitchen endeavours to tackle head on. This statement has been approved by our modern slavery working group and the Lily’s Kitchen Leadership Team. We hope you have found our statement helpful, but if you have any questions or feedback, please do get in touch with us at hello@lilyskitchen.co.uk
If everybody does their bit, we really can help to make the world a better place.
Thank you for reading,
Giorgio Vesprini
CEO, Lily’s Kitchen
Signed on behalf of the Lily’s Kitchen Leadership Team
This statement was last updated on: 30th June 2023