The marketing power of “billions served” is changing the way livestock are raised and processed.
Fast food restaurant chains like McDonald’ s, Burger King and Wendy’ s have been scrutinizing their meat, poultry and dairy suppliers for several years. The biggest changes have been in the United States.
“They made it known if the suppliers did not comply, they may be given a chance to remediate the situation,” said Janice Swanson, an animal welfare specialist at Kansas State University and a member of McDonald’ s farm animal advisory council.
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“If that didn’ t happen,” she told a recent livestock care conference in Calgary, “they were delisted in a very public way in the Wall Street Journal.
“We in the academic community can lecture about these things for 15 years, but it takes one News release
news from McDonald’ s to bring the issue to the forefront.”
McDonald’ s hired animal welfare scientist Temple Grandin in 1996 to inspect suppliers. She inspected 100 American plants, looking at the way animals are led to slaughter, stunned and bled.
Her first series of inspections found that a third of American plants used practices that were unacceptable. A second series of inspections showed substantial improvements.
Larry Campbell of the Canadian Meat Council said McDonald’ s Canada has also inspected its suppliers.
“Plants are being audited on the beef side,” he said.
Nicola Moore of McDonald’ s Canada said the guidelines are North America-wide.
Four Canadian federal beef plants were large enough in 1999 to be eligible to supply McDonald’ s.
According to Grandin’ s website, three of these plants passed the welfare and stunning audits. They correctly stunned 95 percent or more of the cattle. One plant failed on stunning and rendering animals insensible. Some animals had to be stunned several times due to malfunctioning equipment and human error.
She also criticized poultry plants that process cull broilers. They often transported roosters in the same cages as hens. The roosters were aggressive and hurt the hens.
Armed with Grandin’ s report, McDonald’ s has developed a training video for packing plants with the co-operation of its suppliers and the American Meat Institute.
It has also written Animal Welfare Guiding Principles to help suppliers set up welfare programs. The guide has seven requirements to guard food safety and promote humane animal welfare principles. It advocates the ethical treatment of animals and demands that animals be raised, transported and slaughtered in an environment free from cruelty, abuse and neglect.
It plans to continue the inspections and recently started unannounced visits to plants. Purchasing plans will be based on suppliers behaving responsibly and striving for improvement.
McDonald’ s said it will make its program information public. It has also implemented a welfare audit system for laying hens that provides 50 percent more housing space than the industry average and eliminates the practice of withdrawing food to induce molting.
The chain is also supporting alternative sow housing research at Purdue University.
For more information, visit www.mcdonalds.com and www.grandin.com.
