Dear fellow shareholders:
This proposal requests basic transparency: two data points that would enable shareholders to measure METRO’s progress on an issue the company has spent nearly
a decade claiming—and continues to claim— it’s addressing. Here’s the background:
- 2016: METRO pledges to exclusively sell cage-free eggs by 2025—then touts this pledge to shareholders for five years.
- 2021: METRO claims its suppliers won’t meet the commitment but decides to continue working with them to “increase its supply” of cagefree eggs.
- 2023: METRO publishes its 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report, which similarly says it plans to “increase our offering of cage-free
eggs.”
- 2024: A shareholder proposal in METRO’s proxy circular requests details—including strategies, benchmarks, and deliverables. In
opposing it, METRO references some review it apparently commissioned (from an unnamed “external partner”) that claimed there’s no
“consensus” on hen housing. Thus, METRO now says, it’ll sell eggs from cage-free and “enriched” cage systems.
Be that as it may, here’s the problem: METRO’s never given shareholders sufficient data to measure its progress—either toward its original goal, or toward
this revised commitment.
Indeed, although Loblaw, Sobeys, Save-On-Foods, Costco, Walmart, and many others disclose their percentage of cage-free eggs, METRO has refused to do so. It
also doesn’t disclose the percentage of eggs from “enriched cage” systems.
In supporting last year’s proposal, the global asset manager Robeco, with nearly €200 billion under management, said this: “We assessed the company’s
initiatives and disclosures surrounding this issue, and we believe that animal cruelty in the supply chain is a material risk for the company. We determined
that shareholders have limited information to measure the company’s progress towards offering cage-free eggs, so we supported the shareholder
proposal.” [Emphasis added.]
Other shareholders across the world supported it too. In METRO’s own country, TD Asset Management, the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario, and
Canada Post’s pension plan all supported it.
The Swiss financial giant Credit Suisse, the French asset manager Amundi—with €2 trillion under management—and the (state-owned) New Zealand Superannuation
Fund supported it too. So did London- based HSBC, concluding adoption of the proposal “would lead to improvement to animal welfare.”
Still, it didn’t pass. But given the company’s continued claims without sufficient data to support them, we now revisit the matter with a far more limited and
straightforward ask.