Safer, Healthier Food and Other Products

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Sam Walton founded Walmart in 1962, and more than 60 years later, Walmart’s ability to provide safer, healthier, and more affordable food, other products, and essential services to customers is core to our business success and to our mission to help people save money and live better.

Our customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders expect us to uphold high safety standards, offer a strong assortment of healthy and nutritious products, and promote innovation in products and services to promote safer and healthier living.

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Our strategy to provide safer, healthier, and more affordable food, other products, and essential services includes:

• Nutrition and Health: Through our omni-channel food and food nutrition efforts, we seek to make it easier for people to live healthier lives.
• Food Safety: Walmart is committed to providing safe, high-quality food for our customers. In addition to promoting a positive food safety culture within our business, we engage our suppliers and others in the industry to foster a safer food system.
• Product Safety: Walmart is committed to protecting customers and members through implementation of product safety and consumer protection policies, standards, and practices. 
• Sustainable Chemistry: We encourage our suppliers to promote sustainable chemistry by reducing and eliminating the production and use of priority chemicals.

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Affordable, Nutritious Food

Providing access to affordable, nutritious food is central to Walmart’s core business and a focus of our philanthropic efforts around the world. In FY2024, approximately 60% of our Walmart U.S. net sales were from grocery items and over 65% of our Sam’s Club net sales were from groceries and consumables. We seek to enhance this offering by increasing access, providing healthier food options, educating customers on healthier choices, and working to strengthen the field of nutrition practitioners.

Improving Access to Healthy Foods

Expanding Access: Walmart seeks to bring a compelling food offering to communities around the world, including over 10,500 physical stores, 8,000 locations offering online pickup, and 7,800 offering delivery. We have worked to make it easier for lower-income consumers to access this offering in a convenient way, including by working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to allow customers to use Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for online grocery shopping.

Food Donations: Walmart is a significant contributor to community initiatives that address food insecurity through donations of unsold food as well as a philanthropic supporter of organizations reaching food-insecure families. Walmart donated over 780 million pounds of food globally in 2023, as well as over 661 million pounds in the US in FY2024 (57% of which was fruit, vegetables, and meat).

Supporting Food Access Infrastructure: In addition, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation are committed to helping to build the digital and physical infrastructure to support access to nutritious foods.

For more information, see Serving Communities.

Providing Healthier Food Options to Our Customer

We try to make shopping easier for customers looking for affordable, healthier options, including private brand products, affordable produce, organic options, and alternative proteins.

Expanded Assortment: In FY2022, Walmart U.S. launched the Built for Better program, which helps customers identify products that are made with the well-being of people and the planet in mind. The Built for Better—For You icon includes foods with nutritional benefits, plus household and beauty items made without materials or ingredients customers may not want.

We also seek to provide a broad assortment of foods to meet a variety of dietary choices. For example, for those seeking meat and dairy alternatives, we offer a variety of plant-based product choices; customers can also view the plant-based section on Walmart.com.

Promoting Health and Wellness Through Food and Nutrition

Walmart has pharmacies, optical services, and in-store health kiosks in thousands of locations, including medically underserved areas. We advocate for public policies to promote access to healthcare.

Read more: Serving Communities.

Operating at the intersection of food and healthcare, we recognize the strong customer need for solutions to major health challenges such as maternal and infant health and cardiometabolic disease, and we are reshaping business strategies to improve our customer value proposition for these and other needs. We also believe it is important to raise awareness around social determinants of health, and in 2023 hosted a series of Special Health Retail and Edutainment Days in collaboration with community-based and national organizations that reached over 10,000 customers through fun activities, demonstrations, and educational panels.

Walmart.org complements our business strategies to facilitate access to and adoption of nutritious food, including through investments such as:

• St. Vincent Medical Center: In 2023, Walmart approved a grant for St. Vincent Medical Center (SVMC Holdings Inc) to launch a pilot where patients receive conventional clinical interventions, nutrition education through a registered dietician and access to fresh fruits and vegetables. The pilot is aimed at patients with diabetes from communities facing disparities.
• Wholesome Wave Produce Prescription Program: The Walmart Foundation awarded Wholesome Wave a grant to help develop guidelines on how to design produce prescription programs—a type of intervention that aims to improve access to fresh fruit and vegetables for individuals who may not have easy access to healthy food options and are trying to prevent, manage, or reverse a diet-related disease—in a way that better considers the interests of vulnerable communities.
• American Heart Association: In 2023, the Walmart Foundation supported the American Heart Association’s Food as Medicine Research Fund, also known as Health Care by Food Initiative, a national research initiative that aims to accelerate the integration of food and nutrition in healthcare.
• University of Texas UTHealth Houston Produce Prescription: The Walmart Foundation provided the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston a grant to support a cross-sector collaborative effort to improve maternal health outcomes among at-risk vulnerable, Medicaid-eligible pregnant mothers in Harris County, Texas, through home-delivery of healthy foods and nutrition education during pregnancy and up to two months post-partum.

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Food Safety

Walmart is committed to providing safe, quality food for our customers and members. In addition to promoting a positive food safety culture within our organization, we engage suppliers, coalitions, research institutions, and others in our industry to foster a safer food system.

Global Food Safety Program Foundations

Governance: Walmart maintains a Global Food Safety program that is designed to ensure Walmart associates and suppliers meet applicable regulatory requirements and our science-based food safety expectations. Our Global Food Safety and Compliance organization is a team of food safety practitioners and scientists who design and manage a program to ensure food safety in our retail operations, fresh food manufacturing facilities, and supply chain. Our Global Food Safety and Compliance organization is a team of food safety practitioners and scientists who design and manage a program to ensure food safety in our retail operations, fresh food manufacturing facilities, and supply chain.

Policies and Standards: Our Global Food Safety program includes both regulatory and science-based policies, standards, procedures, and controls designed to prevent food safety risks and drive a culture of continuous improvement. Our Code of Conduct and Global Food Safety Policy require associates to follow role-specific food-safety requirements. Our Standards for Suppliers requires suppliers to take steps to help ensure the food they provide is safe and meets all quality and technical requirements; we also expect suppliers and sellers to initiate voluntary and mandatory product recalls where appropriate.

Food Safety Culture: We promote a culture of food safety, including through training and a strong tone from the top. For example, associates in certain roles (e.g., associates in Deli, Bakery, or Meat) are trained on food safety practices relevant to their roles; in FY2024, over 1.2 million associates were trained on at least one food safety course. More broadly, Walmart supports a positive food safety culture through awareness campaigns, messages from senior executives, posters, contests, recognitions, and expert webinars. For example, in 2023, Walmart recognized the World Health Organization’s Food Safety Day in our Home Office, U.S. operations, and several international markets. In 2024, Walmart received the International Association for Food Protection's Black Pearl Award, which recognizes corporate excellence in food safety and quality.

Food Safety in Walmart's Operations

Walmart’s global operational food safety program is based on Good Hygiene Practices and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP).

Store and Club Audits: Independent third parties conduct risk-based audits to verify that our stores and clubs are operating safely and in compliance with relevant law and Walmart’s standards and processes.  In recent years, we enhanced our store audit approach by integrating our pest and food safety audits, improving allergen management, and strengthening aspects related to sanitation, hazard analysis, and risk-based preventive controls. In FY2024, more than 72,000 such audits were conducted.

Walmart-Owned Manufacturing Facility Certification: GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) certifications provide a comprehensive framework to ensure food safety in manufacturing facilities. These certifications require the implementation of robust food safety management systems, including HACCP principles, to identify and control potential hazards in the production process. As of May 2024, 19 of 20 Walmart-owned manufacturing facilities in eight countries are certified, and Walmart is seeking certification on the 20^th.

Distribution Centers and Fulfilment Centers: We also monitor compliance against our internal standards and relevant regulations by conducting third-party audits in distribution facilities, which also include GFSI certification audits

Online Pickup and Delivery in the US: As more customers turn to Walmart for convenience—including online pickup and delivery—our food safety program has continuously evolved to help ensure food is delivered to customers safely. Controls embedded within these newer business processes include:

• Dynamic cold chain re-route technology to automatically send drivers back to the store if delivery time exceeds the accepted threshold
• Separately bagging raw products and chemicals to prevent cross-contamination or leaking during delivery
• Labeling substituted items with a substitution sticker to make customers aware in case there are additional dietary considerations

Supplier Food Safety

As a retailer, the most of the food we sell—including national and private brands—is provided by suppliers. Like most food retailers, the basis of our supplier food safety program is the industry-standard GFSI certification, which is required for private brand products or where Walmart is the importer of record.⁵

Beyond GFSI compliance, Walmart developed risk-based standards for suppliers that are being implemented in our retail markets. For example, suppliers of raw ground beef and bison must disclose information of about processing facilities and reduce pathogens. Suppliers of raw whole-bird chicken, raw chicken parts, and raw ground turkey products must comply with safety initiatives to reduce salmonella transmission. Additionally, Walmart has enhanced supplier food fraud assessments and food fraud risk monitoring (both of which include testing), supplier investigations, oversight of remediation to address nonconformances, and/or sanctions.

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Product Safety

Walmart is committed to providing our customers and members with access to safe, compliant, and more affordable merchandise as well as promoting the safe use of products.

Selling Safe Products

We set high expectations for our associates on product safety in our Code of Conduct and our Global Product Safety Policy. We require associates to follow role-specific practices relevant to product safety; associates in store operations, distribution and fulfillment centers, and merchandising help Walmart source safe products and respond to potential safety issues. We reinforce our high expectations with our suppliers in our Standards for Suppliers and with our sellers through our Marketplace Prohibited Products Policy. We require suppliers and sellers to ensure the products they provide to us are safe and meet all regulatory, quality, and technical requirements, and to conduct product recalls where appropriate.

Holding Our Suppliers to High Product Safety Standards: Walmart maintains a risk-based Product Safety Compliance Program to assist Walmart associates in complying with federal, state, and local product safety laws, requirements, and company policies. The Product Safety Compliance Program includes training requirements tailored for merchandising teams, among others.

In the U.S., we expect our general merchandise suppliers to send their items to approved third-party testing laboratories so the items can be independently tested for compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and standards. In addition to regulatory safety standards, Walmart has adopted certain industry consensus safety standards and utilizes a formal risk-based process to assess products for compliance with those standards. This includes adopting select requirements that extend beyond regulatory requirements.

When an item is deemed non-compliant, we alert the supplier so they can correct the issue and remove the item from sale, and we prohibit purchase in stores and online, when appropriate. Through our participation in the Retailer Reporting Program, we voluntarily provide the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)—the principal federal regulatory agency overseeing the safety of consumer products—with product incident data so that it can take better-informed actions to keep consumers safe.

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Sustainable Chemistry

We collaborate with our suppliers to promote sustainable chemistry by reducing and eliminating the use of priority chemicals in existing products. We also introduce and curate brands that avoid using these chemicals.

Supplier Engagement and Results

Walmart’s Sustainable Chemistry Commitment⁶ aims to reduce “priority chemicals”⁷ in our U.S. consumable products. We aim to achieve this by engaging our suppliers to reduce or eliminate these chemicals in formulated consumable products⁸ within our U.S. business.  

Following the achievement of our Sustainable Chemistry Goal in 2021, we updated our priority chemicals list and increased the number of chemicals we screen from over 2,800 to over 4,000. As of 2023, there were 66,335 products within the scope of the program.

We encourage suppliers to reformulate products to reduce priority chemicals, enhance transparency into ingredients and formulations, and certify products using credible accreditations such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Safer Choice program, EWG Verified, or Cradle to Cradle (silver level or above). In response, some suppliers have launched products made without priority chemicals.

While we aim to reduce our overall priority chemical intensity, progress is not always linear. We have recorded increases in priority chemical intensity in the last two years due to assortment changes and shifts in customer preferences, among other factors. We will continue to engage our suppliers and look for innovative new products free from priority chemicals.

Transparency and Industry Engagement

Walmart publicly discloses answers to the 19 questions in the Chemical Footprint Survey and our overall final score as part of the Chemical Footprint Project. For 2021, the most recent year the award was made, Walmart was recognized as 1 of 10 CFP Disclosure Leaders.

Read more about our current approach in the Sustainable Chemistry Implementation Guide.

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• Food and product safety programs are dependent on the maturity, rigor, and efficacy of third-party standards, initiatives, and laboratories and there are limits to the efficacy of tools used to monitor compliance with expectations.  
• The success of food and product safety programs is dependent on suppliers’ capacity and willingness to meet high standards, report accurate information, and sustain performance.  
• Food safety risks are often upstream and beyond the reach of traditional retailer oversight and monitoring tools. Lack of reliable data on the source/origin of certain commodities and product ingredients and the way they are produced—as well as the blending and commoditization of product inputs and ingredients—complicates food safety. The use of technology to improve transparency and traceability (e.g., blockchain) can help, but adoption takes time and further innovation is necessary to meet these challenges.  
• The breadth of Walmart's global product offerings and dispersed geographical reach of supply chains can present challenges for supplier engagement and risk identification and mitigation. 
• Walmart’s ability to scale healthier food options is dependent on customer preferences and demand (which can depend on the cost and convenience of such options) and the availability and cost of preferred products, ingredients, commodities, and inputs. Growth in and/or changes in our business can challenge our ability to meet customer demands consistent with our aspiration of healthier food for all.

1. Walmart measures the total volume of priority chemicals in products subject to Walmart’s Sustainable Chemistry Commitment by screening product formulations reported to UL WERCSmart by our suppliers. To learn more about our formulation disclosure requirements, please visit “Section 2: Transparency” of our Sustainable Chemistry Implementation Guide.

2. Based on reports from Feeding America.

3. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Sustainable Chemistry is “the design, manufacture and use of efficient, effective, safe and more environmentally benign chemical products and processes.”

5. Suppliers of other national brand products are responsible for complying with the law and all relevant standards, but Walmart does not actively monitor their compliance.

6. In 2017, we set a goal of reducing the presence of priority chemicals in our U.S consumable products by 10% within five years. By the end of 2021, we had exceeded that goal and achieved a 20% reduction compared to our 2017 baseline. We therefore use 2021 as our new chemical footprint.

7. The "priority chemicals" we screen for were determined by referencing regulatory and authoritative precautionary lists of chemicals, as well as input from the Underwriter Laboratories, a third-party laboratory, and the Environmental Defense Fund. These reference lists can be found at Sustainability Chemistry Implementation Guide: Appendices. The number of products subject to Walmart’s Sustainable Chemistry Commitment varies year-over-year due to changes in our product assortment.

8. Walmart’s Sustainable Chemistry Commitment excludes active ingredients that provide therapeutic benefit when present in a product approved by the FDA New Drug Application process.

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