McCormick’s Grown for Good Standard achieves Silver Level equivalence against SAI Platform’s Farm Sustainability Assessment

SAI Platform is pleased to announce the outcome of a benchmarking effort between McCormick’s Grown for Good Standard and SAI Platform’s Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA). Grown for Good is recognised as Silver level equivalent against FSA Version 2.1.

Simply put, any farm in the world complying with McCormick’s Grown for Good standard, can now recognise the crops they grow as FSA silver equivalent. This means they can be counted towards any other FSA users’ sustainable sourcing targets and vice versa. Moreover, byproducts derived from a supply chain that were successfully Grown for Good-certified can now also be sold as FSA equivalent.

“This recognition of our Grown for Good Standard by the Food & Beverage industry represented by SAI Platform marks our commitment to sustainable sourcing with our suppliers and farmers in a way that is credible, impactful, and adapted to our supply chains,” commented Donald Pratt, Managing Director at McCormick Global Ingredients Limited. 

SAI Platform created the FSA in 2014 as a tool to assess the level of on-farm sustainability and to benchmark existing standards. The benchmarking process involves scoring against 112 questions as well as a consistency check by a SAI Platform-approved independent expert.

“We congratulate McCormick Global Ingredients Limited on the successful completion of the benchmarking process,” said Joe Rushton, FSA Programme Lead at SAI Platform. “This reflects the company’s commitment to promoting an industry-wide adoption of more sustainable agricultural practices and the need to come together to support sustainable change.”

Through its Purpose-led Performance Report, McCormick Global Ingredients Limited has laid out a series of commitments and clear performance targets for 2025, including the following around sustainable sourcing:

1. Source all herbs and spices sustainably, beginning with 100% of McCormick’s branded iconic ingredients: vanilla, black pepper, red pepper, cinnamon, and oregano.
2. Increase resilience of 90% of smallholder farmers that grow its iconic key herbs and spices, as measured by increasing skills and capacity, income, access to financial services, education, and nutrition and health.
3. Map the contribution of women on-farm in 100% of McCormick’s iconic ingredient sourcing communities and pilot an integrated global approach to gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.

To learn more about the ways in which McCormick Global Ingredients Limited are helping to advance farming practices around the world and the policies that govern the company’s role in this global supply chain, visit McCormick’s website.

To learn more about the results of the benchmarking, users can access scoring for benchmarked standards under “Benchmark Equivalency Overview” on the FSA Resource Centre.