Happy Valentine's Day, McDonald's! | The Business Ethics Blog

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By Lauren | February 14, 2012

Writing about business ethics can get pretty depressing sometimes. There are so many situations where corporations make the news by behaving badly in one way or another that it sometimes seems it isn?t even possible to catalogue them all. Consequently, I?m excited to have the opportunity to praise McDonald?s for teaming up with The Humane Society of the United States to improve the lot of animals on industrial farms.

You may remember that, back in November, I wrote up an SEC complaint filed by HSUS against Smithfield Farms, the company that supplies pork for McDonald?s McRib sandwich. Yesterday, I was delighted to learn that McDonald?s had issued a joint statement with HSUS calling for the end of sow confinement in gestation crates at industrial farms. For those who aren?t familiar with gestation crates, imagine being trapped in a metal box so small you couldn?t even turn around ? for weeks on end. Those crates keep sows essentially immobile, ensuring that they?ll suffer miserably before eventually being put to death. Having a restaurant mega-chain like McDonald?s come out against use of the crates will undoubtedly grab the attention of the pork industry and could lead to significant improvements in the lives of breeding pigs. Who knows? Smithfield might even agree to get rid of the crates before 2017, its current (and, to my mind, ridiculously distant) target date.

Even better, that isn?t all McDonald?s has done. Poking around a little more on the HSUS website, I discovered that, in May of 2011, McDonald?s started buying cage-free eggs in the United States. If gestation crates are tiny, the barren battery cages used by the egg industry are even smaller, about the size of a placemat. They make very efficient use of space but, once again, impose utter misery on the hens who are forced to inhabit them. HSUS estimates that McDonald?s? decision to start using cage-free eggs will free about 50,000 hens from those tiny cages, a good start toward ending a barbaric practice.

Don?t get me wrong - I?m not saying that McDonald?s has suddenly become an incredibly enlightened company or that my daughter will be allowed to eat there daily from now on. But I have some understanding of the pressures that corporations face to pay ever-escalating dividends to their shareholders and the impact those pressures can have on management?s willingness to sacrifice profits in the name of principles. Consequently, I believe that even small changes toward a more humane and sustainable food industry should be applauded. Yes, consumers eat animal products, but that doesn?t mean that it?s right for animals to suffer needlessly. I?m glad to see McDonald?s putting its economic muscle behind more humane farming practices. So, this Valentine?s Day, here?s a virtual hug for the corporate executives at McDonald?s who chose to help HSUS improve the lot of America?s farm animals. Good going, Ronald!

Topics: Business Ethics, Corporate Governance, Social Ethics, corporate responsibility, customer relations, ethics |

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