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Small Farms, Big Ideas
It seems like more and more of us are asking ourselves a basic question that many of our teachers used to ask us in grade school: Where does our food come from? Sometimes what we learn is incredibly reassuring. Other times the reality isn’t appetizing at all.
When it comes to quality assurance and food safety, animal well-being and natural resource conservation, our practices say a lot about our company’s values. Our guiding principle is simple: if you do the right thing, success will follow.
For Maple Leaf Farms, we’ve made a genuine commitment to do these things and do them well through years of progress and improvement. We’ve invested in our employees and in our capabilities across the organization. We’ve asked more of the farm families we partner with. We’ve tapped outside animal science experts to help us understand best practices and develop our own Duck Well-Being Guidelines and audit procedures. And we’ve never lost focus of the belief that doing the right thing means you can always do better.
All that we do in quality assurance, animal well-being and natural resource conservation ensures we have a company, employees and products we’re proud of. Today we have farms and facilities that are rigorously guarded from outside health threats. And we have an environmental ethic that respects and seeks to reduce our impact on the land, air and water in the communities where we work and live.
We’ll never be bashful about telling you where our duck comes from.
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Trident Stewardship Program
Maple Leaf Farms was the first duck company in North America to implement a comprehensive duck well-being program that includes science-based duck care for all stages of production, a training program for staff and growers, and an audit system that helps us continually identify areas to improve.
Our Duck Well-Being Guidelines set clear standard procedures for every person, practice and phase in our grow-out and processing operations. First began in the mid 1990s, the guidelines are informed by the company’s Duck Care Core Beliefs and live production leadership and by research-driven recommendations from an advisory committee of outside experts in animal science and veterinary medicine.
We’ve updated and improved our Duck Well-Being Guidelines in April 2002, August 2006, and September 2009. We’re convinced the years of internal debate and continued learning around our Duck Well-Being Guidelines have created a stronger company and helped us offer our customers a consistently outstanding duck. And as strange as this might sound, we sincerely hope other duck companies take a hard look at Maple Leaf Farms’ Duck Well-Being Guidelines and consider adopting them for their own operations.
Over the years, our perspective on duck well-being has evolved into a Trident Stewardship Program, where Maple Leaf Farms and the farmers we partner with focus on duck well-being, biosecurity (disease prevention), and natural resources conservation. The result is a high performing system where expectations are transparent and accountability measures ensure we implement these guidelines every day and at every location.
Program Components 
• Farming Practices
• Audits
• Feed Program
• Health Management
• Quality Assurance and Food Safety Program
• Natural Resource Conservation
Contact Us
Please reach out if you have any questions about our food safety, animal well-being and natural resource conservation practices. We’d love to hear from you.
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