Humanity Is King
Another Humane Society press release alerted me that Burger King will commit to buying humanely raised animals for its restaurants. The sheer scale of the Burger King chain prevents it from switching over every animal product to a humane alternative, but they've made good first steps. I wonder how one polices them on these goals.
From the press release:
- It has begun purchasing two percent of its eggs from producers that do not confine laying hens in battery cages. It will more than double the percentage of cage-free eggs it’s using to five percent by the end of the year.
- It has implemented a purchasing preference for cage-free eggs. Such a preference is intended to favor producers that convert away from battery-cage confinement systems.
- It has started purchasing 10 percent of its pork from producers that do not confine breeding pigs in gestation crates, which are too small to allow even ordinary movement. The volume of pork purchases coming from gestation crate-free producers will double to 20 percent by the end of the year.
- It has also implemented a purchasing preference for pork from producers that do not confine breeding sows in gestation crates.
- It has implemented a preference for producers that use controlled atmosphere killing of chickens used for meat. This has been shown to cause significantly less suffering than the conventional method of slaughter used by most of the nation’s poultry slaughterers.
Okay, McDonald's, join the club. Stop clowning around with the OED, and give yourself the ultimate PR. Eric Schlosser once said, in discussing the hellish life of a slaughterhouse worker, that if McDonald's wanted to purchase beef from companies that treated their employees fairly, the entire industry would change overnight. Imagine if they wielded that power for an ethical food system. Even I might eat there again.
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