Our safety policies, governance structure and management approach are designed to promote a safe work culture for our more than 58,000 team members. The Pilgrim’s Occupational Health and Safety Management System focuses on training and educating our team members and eliminating work hazards. The System meets relevant government requirements in each country. We defer to governing bodies like those listed below to evaluate the effectiveness of external safety audit processes, collect feedback and make necessary adjustments.
Our American and Puerto Rican facilities operate in alignment with U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards. In Europe, our programs meet the Health Safety Executive Reporting of Incidents Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR). In Mexico, our team tracks data according to the government Secretaria del Trabajo and the Safety and Health regulations, which comply with OSHA standards.
Each Pilgrim’s facility has a Safety Manager, also called a Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) Manager in some regions, who reports to the General Manager or Complex Manager. In total, we have more than 300 team members whose roles and responsibilities are dedicated to the health and safety of our team members in our facilities. Every facility also has a safety committee that is chaired by the facility Safety Manager or Site Director and consists of hourly team members, union representatives and key senior management from the site. Approximately three to 15% of all team members are engaged in safety committees, which represent 100% of our workforce. The facility safety manager and facility safety team (or Site Director, SHE Manager and facility Senior Management team in some regions) analyze environmental and physical hazards and propose strategies, aligned with the hierarchy of controls, to keep our workplace safe. Each Pilgrim’s business unit has a Head of Safety who reports to the Head of Human Resources or Head of Operations, who reports to the President of that business unit. There is also a corporate safety and human resources team that supports all Pilgrim’s business units by further analyzing data and tracking programs across the company. The Heads of Safety at Pilgrim’s sit on a corporate Safety Leadership Committee. This committee meets regularly to discuss safety standards and best practices. Every Head of Safety also participates in the Executive Safety Council. This Council consists of executives from across the Pilgrim’s parent company including; business unit Presidents, Vice Presidents, Heads of Operations, Heads of Engineering, Heads of Human Resources and the Heads of Safety. The council meets regularly to discuss outcomes and progress, and to review recommended changes from the Safety Leadership Committee. Safety performance is also a driver of executive-level bonuses.
To ensure successful implementation of our health and safety policies, safety data is integrated across a shared digital platform, allowing us to share best practices and identify enterprise-wide trends. This enables us to develop data-driven corrective actions to our processes, including team member observations, safety inspections and audits. We also update our safety programs regularly by detailing new challenges, auditing techniques and providing straightforward solutions. Our safety teams focus on safety training, performance, measurement and the sharing of best practices across all of Pilgrim’s business units.
Team members are empowered to report and correct unsafe acts and conditions without fear of retribution. Team members are also empowered to remove themselves from situations they deem to be unsafe.
To continuously improve, we set companywide and facility-specific safety goals each year and track leading safety indicators. Performance is reported daily, weekly and monthly to management teams so decisions that impact health and safety can be made swiftly. All operations supervisors are required to conduct multiple safety observations each week to identify unsafe behaviors and intervene with helpful coaching prior to the occurrence of an unsafe act, condition or injury.
We monitor weekly for unsafe behaviors, working surfaces, machine guarding, safety gaps, electrical safety, drive cam coaching effectiveness, preventable vehicle accident rates and corrective actions. We also track indicators, such as total recordable incident rate (TRIR), days away, restrictions and transfers (DART) rate, lost time rate and severe incidents, weekly. We consistently outperform industry averages in TRIR and DART rate, and continue to improve the performance of our health and safety programs.
We also track a Safety Index for each facility that measures the frequency of severe incidents per hour of operation. A severe incident is defined as an amputation, hospitalization, vision loss, fracture or second- or third-degree burns resulting in greater than five days lost time, any injury resulting in greater than five days lost time or a fatality.
Our Commitment 
