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| - Yoghurt giant Danone unveiled Wednesday plans to use France's new legal corporate mission framework to integrate social goals into its business objectives. Countries have been adopting legal frameworks for companies to add public benefits to their corporate goals amid a growing movement for businesses to better align their goal of making money to wider social and environmental interests. France adopted its "corporate mission" rules last year and Danone said it would propose to shareholders next month to incorporate that model into its charter and "apply a new governance arrangement to oversee the progress of its environmental, social and societal goals." It noted its North American subsidiary had become the largest company to use the public benefit corporation model there and still aimed for B Corp certification -- private verification of its social and environmental performance -- for its global operations. CEO Emmanuel Faber said the corporate mission framework will help Danone meet its "objective to serve, in a fair and transparent manner, everyone in our business ecosystem, and ... how we will create resilient, and therefore sustainable, value in this new world." Danone will be following fellow CAC-40 firm Carrefour, as the French supermarket firm integrated a mission goal to make quality food accessible to all. Danone, which counts more than 100,000 employees worldwide last year and generated more then 25 billion euros ($27 billion) in sales, has a stable of brands that includes Evian water and Aptamil baby food. Farmers have accused large agroindustrial firms and supermarket chains of pushing down prices so agricultural is no longer sustainable. Faber said Europe's current agricultural system needs to adapt as climate change has made it unprofitable and urged the European Union to include the food industry as it updates its agricultural policy. "Until now you have had the agroindustry on one side and the common agricultural policy on the other and neither spoke to the other," he said. myl-ngu-lrb/rl/wai
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