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Reacting to pressure from the public and from animal protection organizations, fast food chains McDonald’s and Burger King have recently sparked more improvements in the welfare of farm animals than have taken place in the last 50 years. McDonald’s Corporation US started the ball rolling in August 2000 when it informed the farmers who provide more than 1.5 billion eggs per year that they would have to comply with strict new guidelines for raising hens or risk losing the company’s business. The CFHS joined with other animal protection organizations to ask McDonald’s Canada to introduce the same requirements.
Both McDonald’s and Burger King now have animal welfare advisory committees. Dr. David Fraser, a leading expert on farm animal welfare issues and a professor of animal welfare at the University of British Columbia, sits on Burger King’s advisory committee. Dr. Temple Grandin, North America’s authority on animal slaughter sits on the advisory group for both companies. Both companies have introduced standards for cows, chickens and pigs.
For laying hens, the McDonald’s and Burger King standards require slightly more space per bird and the discontinuation of painful beak trimming and forced moulting. The latter procedure involves withholding food and water to increase egg production. However, the standards still permit birds to be kept in battery cages, often in barn holding hundreds of thousands of birds. The increase to 72 square inches per bird by McDonald’s and 75 square inches by Burger King is not significant in Canada, as Canadian government standards already require 70 square inches per bird, whereas the US industry standard is 40 square inches.
The companies’ new standards for meat production animals (cows, pigs and chickens) address slaughter and preslaughter conditions for the animals, such as more appropriate lighting, reduction of loud noises, appropriate surfaces to allow for good footing and effective stunning methods. Burger King has also indicated it will no longer do business with abattoirs that sell meat from downed animals (animals too sick or injured to walk into the slaughterhouse). Burger King has also expressed concern about the use of sow stalls that are used to confine gestating sows for two to three months.
The CFHS applauds Burger King’s and McDonald’s efforts. Although the standards represent only incremental improvements for the animals, they are a step in the right direction. The media attention given to the issue has raised public awareness in North America about food animals and how they are treated in today’s factory farms. Standards in European countries are already significantly ahead of those in North America. The European Union has already agreed to phase out battery cages for hens and gestation crates for sows by 2012.
