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Statement Update: Images of dog fighting circulating on the internet
Originally posted 18 April 2012

Last update 7 September 2012

Images continue to circulate in social media channels showing a dog fight, with Heineken banners clearly visible in the background. This is very distressing and totally unacceptable. As a company and a brand owner, we do not and would never knowingly support any event, outlet or individual involved in this type of activity. It is against our company and brand rules and - more
important - against our company values.

Since this matter was brought to our attention via Facebook we have conducted an investigation and now know that:

The venue is a nightclub in Mongolia
The venue hosted a dog fight of which we had no knowledge and were not involved in any way
The venue owner has formally confirmed that Heineken banners are visible in the pictures because the previous evening the club had been decorated for a promotional event and he had failed to remove the banners once it was over. This event was in no way related to the dog fight. (Click to see document)

Based on this we have taken the following immediate actions:

Removed all remaining promotional materials from the venue
Withdrawn all current product stock from the club
Ceased our relationship, ensuring our brands will not be available in the club again
Instructed our distributor to check every location where our brands can be enjoyed to ensure such illegal activities are not taking place. If there is any suggestion that they are, we will take the same action and remove our products
Continue to ensure our strict advertising and promotion guidelines are enforced both to the letter and the spirit of their intent

We want to thank our consumers on-line for bringing this issue to our attention. We are shocked and disappointed by these images. We fully understand the level of negative feeling amongst consumers based on what they have seen. We appreciate that the vast majority have asked for our point of view before making a judgment. We encourage our consumers to continue to use social media channels to alert us to any situation where they feel our brands are being misrepresented, so that we can take the appropriate actions.

We fully appreciate that recent events have put HEINEKEN's social responsibility credentials under the spotlight. We believe that we have acted swiftly and decisively to address the false accusations made against us, and to underline our global reputation as an ethical & sustainable business.

We hope you will also understand that it would be wrong for us to react to these immediate circumstances out of the context of our long term, well established, sustainability programme. This has been designed to support society at large and work within the communities in which we operate. We must focus our efforts in those areas where we believe we can have the greatest impact and that are directly relevant to our business. These have been developed in conjunction with our stakeholders.

Through our 'Brewing A Better Future' initiative, we are focusing our efforts on improving our environmental impact, empowering communities where we operate and positively the positive role of beer in society. In practice this means that we have four key priority areas:

Working with concerned groups on addressing the issues of alcohol abuse
Providing health care to employees, their dependents and communities where it doesn't currently exist
Supporting agricultural initiatives to help empower communities economically socially
Reducing the amount of energy consumed in delivering the products that we make

Should you be interested you can find out more about our sustainability programme by visiting www.sustainabilityreport.heineken.com

Sadly, we do not have the resources, investment or people to support every worthy cause that exists and you will appreciate that we receive hundreds of requests each month around the world. We hope you will now understand what we do and the basis on which we make our decisions.

For more information please contact john.g.clarke@heineken.com