Eleven Rivers Badge: Social Responsibility System

Introduction

Social responsibility has currently become very important in a globalized world, characterized for increasingly demanding consumers, which acquire food responsily, while taking care of their health and pay attention to how their food was produced.

The world is changing rapidly and businessmen -with vision for the future- must evolve to stay in the market: requiring to pay special attention to the compliance with labor standards, health care and life of workers, suppression of forced and mandatory labor, eliminating discrimination against women due to their gender, abolition of child labor, and freedom of association and freedom for choosing an union.

Recently, most produce growers have incorporated food safety as part of their product quality. Now, the challenge is that social responsibility practices are also inherent; and that employers take the necessary commitments so that the costs in this area are considered an investment and not an expense.

Eleven Rivers Badge in its two leves, “Full Compliance” and “Beyond”, cover the subjects of highest risk in the agriculture industry, mainly those related to temporary workers, considering the workers coming from regions with high marginalization, and also those living in surrounding areas of agriculture zones.

In addition to compliance with the legislation -which applies to the performance of companies-, the Eleven Rivers Certification Scheme evaluates the contribution of these in the protection of children’s rights and promotion of preventive medicine, as a retribution to the community.

Safety and health at work have been incorporated as a relevant social responsibility action. Companies must create a healthy and safe working environment to protect their workers. Worldwide, lives are lost and damaged each year, due to industrial accidents and diseases caused by working conditions.

Additionally, we include the performance evaluation in protecting the environment, life and livelihood of mankind depend on natural resources; preserve and use them reasonably is our responsibility.