Our Commitments

Transparency at Bayer

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Transparency is a top priority for Bayer. We are committed to build up and strengthen trust by making information accessible from a whole range of areas.

There's no trust without transparency - Bayer has therefore pledged to further strengthen its commitment to transparency.
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Matthias Berninger
Global Head of Public Affairs & Sustainability at Bayer

Science is the key to solving the most pressing challenges of our time. Fighting climate change and global diseases will require innovative solutions – and it is our goal to bring them out of the lab and into the world. To garner trust in us and our products, people need to be able to grasp what we are doing and why we are doing it.

 

Therefore, we at Bayer are committed to building up and strengthening trust by making information about our products and how we operate easily accessible.

 

Taking concrete action, we have implemented the following 12 commitments promoting transparency beyond regulatory requirements and encouraging an open dialogue about our work. We will continue on this path, striving to advance transparency in the future.

We publicly disclose new contract-based scientific collaborations of Bayer entities in Germany and the USA with universities, public research institutions and individuals worldwide via the Bayer Science Collaboration Explorer (BSCE).

Bayer is fully committed to make information about its planned and ongoing clinical trials publicly available. This is done in line with the position of the global pharmaceutical industry associations and applicable laws and regulations. Bayer will also make results of trials in patients public and provide free access to this information on several publicly accessible Clinical Trial Registries on the internet, irrespective of whether the results of a trial for one of our products are positive or negative. Bayer is committed to sharing of study patient data with qualified researchers as a transparency measure to advance medical knowledge and public health and foster scientific discovery. Data sharing is following international standards to protect patient’s data privacy.

We disclose any financial commitments with healthcare professionals to ensure maximum transparency and safeguard medical integrity via our CRYSTAL database.

We aim to remove barriers to obtaining detailed information on the safety of our products by enabling access to product safety information and regulatory submission documents in parallel with background materials and information on our rigorous crop safety standards. We are also sharing our internal product safety standards to shed light on how we determine how products can be used safely here. With our European Small Breeders Initiative we provide additional transparency for small vegetable breeding companies in the EU and facilitate their access to innovation.

We are opening our doors via our Crop Science OpenLabs program, allowing people to connect with our scientists and watch them carry out a safety study live in our labs and in the field.

We provide regular and timely information on the Group’s position and significant changes in business activities to shareholders, financial analysts, the media, and the general public. 

We disclose detailed information on our political activities in the transparency registers operating by the European Union, the U.S. Congress and the German Parliament (Bundestag). We also publish our key political positions on our website and, as of 2023, publish an annual political advocacy transparency report.

We are committed to respecting and fostering human rights within our business activities and in business relations and to reporting transparently on the results of our activities in this area. For more information, please see our Sustainability Report.

We support charitable projects that focus on achieving Health for All, Hunger for None – our donations are made transparent in our annual Sustainability Report.

In our Sustainability Report, we also showcase how our operations affect the environment and how much natural resources we consume, e.g., concerning freshwater. Our sustainability efforts are also examined by an independent Sustainability Council that regularly reports (PDF, 0,74MB) on its progress and priorities.

We regularly assess and disclose the alignment of our industry associations’ climate positions with our commitments on climate change. For more information, please see our Industry Association Climate Review 2021 (PDF, 6,3MB).

We increase transparency and visibility of Bayer’s innovative research activities within the external scientific community through our Science in Spotlight platform, listing peer-reviewed scientific publications authored by Bayer employees.

As Head of the Crop Science Division and in light of our ongoing transparency efforts I would like to emphasize that good scientific practice is a prerequisite for us that is clearly anchored in our binding group-wide internal policies. This includes a maximum of transparency through our publication practice and with it of course a prohibition of any kind of ghostwriting amongst others.
Rodrigo
Rodrigo Santos
Member of the Board of Management & Head of the Crop Science Division

We believe that more transparency will foster a stronger, more sustainable, long-term partnership with our stakeholders and, ultimately, increase overall trust in us and our innovations. Therefore, we will continue to engage with stakeholders who are asking for more transparency and strive to further advance our efforts wherever possible in the future. This finds its limits in the protection of, inter alia, business and trade secrets or in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. 


Our commitment to transparency goes beyond just Bayer as a company – we want to drive this forward together with our industry, academic, and civil society partners. As we embark on this journey, we welcome any open dialogue with interested stakeholders.