Keeping Our House in Order

Ensuring that our people have safe and respectful working conditions is more than a priority. It’s an imperative. That’s why we’ve created a risk-based approach to human rights that’s built on a platform designed to drive continuous improvement. Legal requirements can vary from region to region, and our process has been essential in implementing and supporting our Human Rights Policy around the world.

The Process:

1. Global Risk Assessment
   We evaluate each country where we have field operations against the nine elements of hour Human Rights Policy.
2. Identify High Risk Countries
   In order ot focus on improving conditions in areas with the greatest humans rights risk we identify high-, medium- and low-risk countries.
3. Individual Assessments in High Risk Countries
   We do internal audits as well as hire third parties to audit our own operations as well as our business partners' operations.
4. Corrective Actions
   When the audits reveal potential or actual violations of our Human Rights Policy, we mobilize our Human Rights Champions to take corrective actions.
5. Active Monitoring and Reporting
   Our Human Rights Champions play an integral role in actively monitoring and reporting on human rights initiatives in their region.

This risk assessment process is updated every three years. However, the individual assessments, implementation of corrective actions and active monitoring and reporting are ongoing. Additionally, regardless of the risk level assigned to a country or operation, employees of Monsanto and our business partners have ready access to our human rights team to voice their concerns through a variety of means, including dedicated telephone lines, electronic mail and auditors and Champions.