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Over the past six months, McDonald’s has made an array of claims regarding its farmed animal welfare standards. These claims have been made to the SEC, to the media, to shareholders, and in McDonald’s proxy statement. The SEC already sided with PETA and Trillium Asset Management once, but many concerned shareholders continue to be misled. This document is a brief assessment of McDonald’s claims and our (PETA and Trillium Asset Management) responses. If you have any questions or would like to see our SEC response, which is a more detailed rebuttal of McDonald’s statements, please contact PETA’s director of vegan outreach, Bruce Friedrich.
 McDonald’s Statements in Response to PETA and Trillium Asset Management’s Proposal
McDonald’s suggests that it “is a strong advocate of good animal handling practices and seeks to achieve humane treatment of animals by purchasing its meat products from suppliers who maintain high animal welfare standards. … McDonald’s has adopted ‘McDonald’s Animal Welfare Guiding Principles’ (the ‘Guiding Principles’). … The Guiding Principles express the company’s commitment to the raising, transportation, and slaughter of animals in a manner that is free of cruelty, abuse and neglect. The Guiding Principles are applicable … on a worldwide basis. … McDonald’s seeks to implement its animal welfare objectives by establishing procedures founded on the Guiding Principles. As stated in the Guiding Principles, McDonald’s, together  with its outside experts, works with its suppliers to develop systems to monitor and assess the effectiveness of the suppliers’ animal handling practices.” McDonald’s goes on to claim that its abattoir audit plan “is global in scope and is detailed on the company’s Web site,” further claiming that Dr. Temple Grandin “has visited McDonald’s supply chain management and suppliers in the United States, Australia, and Europe. Since 1999, many audits have been completed in abattoir facilities, including facilities in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific. The effectiveness of McDonald’s audit program was highlighted by Dr. Grandin in a paper presented at the National Institute of Animal Agriculture on April 4, 2001” [emphasis added].
McDonald’s “Guiding Principles” (titled “Commitment to Animal Welfare” on the Web site) referenced above, includes the statement: “McDonald’s will communicate our process, programs, plans, and progress surrounding animal welfare. McDonald’s is committed to sharing our progress with our customers and shareholders, while sharing best practices with our competitors ...”
The above statements disprove themselves. McDonald’s claims that it details all animal welfare plans at McDonalds.com yet does not discuss any international plans there; McDonald’s details what an international animal welfare plan must look like, but even a casual read of McDonald’s statements makes it very clear that McDonald’s does not have an international plan for animal welfare; and McDonald’s does not even have an international plan for abattoir audits, despite its claims to the contrary.
 First, McDonald’s says its Web site details its plans, but its Web site does not mention any countries other than the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
McDonald’s states quite clearly that it “will communicate our process, programs, plans, and progress surrounding animal welfare. McDonald’s is committed to sharing our progress with our customers and shareholders, while sharing best practices with our competitors.” However, nothing on McDonald’s Web site indicates that its animal welfare Guiding Principles or even its abattoir audit plan are applied internationally (despite its statement to the contrary, above). Since a part of the “Guiding Principles” are, in McDonald’s own words, to “communicate our process, programs, plans, and progress surrounding animal welfare … with our customers and shareholders” and since there is no mention of any developments at all regarding animal welfare other than in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia, it seems reasonable to assume that nothing has been done outside these countries, if one takes McDonald’s own statements seriously.
 Second, McDonald’s Does Not Have an International Animal Welfare Plan
McDonald’s states that the “Guiding Principles” must apply to the “raising, transportation, and slaughter of animals” and in order to have some practical benefit to animals, must require implementation of some sort (“McDonald’s seeks to implement its animal welfare objectives”). Further, according to McDonald’s statement on animal welfare, it can be reasonably assumed that implementation will require:
• “procedures” that follow from the Guiding Principles
• “outside experts” to determine how the principles will play out as policy
• “systems to monitor and assess the effectiveness of the suppliers’ animal handling practices”
• procedures that apply to every aspect of the animals’ lives—“the raising, transportation, and slaughter of animals in a manner that is free of cruelty, abuse, and neglect”
 Thus anyone, upon even a casual read of McDonald’s statement, would assume that the corporation has, if it has global international standards, consulted with outside experts to implement procedures that apply to the raising, transport, and slaughter of all animals whom they serve as food, with a plan for audits to monitor suppliers’ practices. We agree with McDonald’s that these are the essential elements of a serious animal welfare policy.
Anyone who goes to McDonald’s Web site or reviews McDonald’s form letter or statements on the issue of international farmed animal welfare standards will find that the corporation has only done any of these things, even partially, in the United States, Australia, Canada, and United Kingdom (more on this will follow) and done none of these things in any comprehensive way in any country. For example, practices that McDonald’s says are cruel and takes credit for ending in the U.K., where fewer than 5 percent of McDonald’s restaurants operate, continue in every other country where McDonald’s exists. Also, McDonald’s has no chicken slaughter standards in any country except the U.S. and the U.K., despite being the world’s number two chicken purchaser.
It’s fine for McDonald’s to say that its “Guiding Principles” apply internationally, but without the above elements, gleaned from McDonald’s own introductory discussion of animal welfare, the principles are not a policy and have no practical effect.
Even in the U.S., where the company does better than in Canada, Australia, and every other country except the U.K., McDonald’s animal welfare programs are still far from comprehensive, as they deal only with egg-laying hens on farms, chickens during transport, and all animals at slaughterhouses. Even in the U.S., it does not have any animal welfare procedures for chickens on farms, breeding chickens on farms, pigs on farms, cows in feedlots or on the range, or pigs or cows during transport (until they reach the slaughterhouse). In at least four distinct areas where McDonald’s was found to be “culpably responsible for cruelty” to animals (by a British High Court judge) in the U.S. and U.K., McDonald’s-USA is still supporting the very practices deemed cruel by Justice Bell (according to any reasonable person, he stated). The practices were sow stalls for pigs, cages for hens, genetic alteration of chickens, and shed space for chickens. McDonald’s-UK is still supporting the last two of these.
 In the U.K., McDonald’s now stamps its egg products with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) “Freedom Foods” symbol because McDonald’s refuses to purchase from suppliers that cage hens. This policy is only in existence in the U.K. In the U.S., McDonald’s has a detailed plan to treat laying hens better by only cramming five of them into an 18-inch-by-20-inch cage, by refusing to allow forced molting, and so on. McDonald’s has other standards in both the U.S. and U.K. (e.g., McDonald’s has banned gestation crates for sows in the U.K., but nowhere else in the world). Justice Bell held that any reasonable person would find battery cages to be cruel, and although McDonald’s agrees in the U.K., it refuses to phase out these horrible cages anywhere else in the world.
Outside the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia, McDonald’s has no “procedures” that apply to the “raising, transportation, and slaughter of animals” and thus also no “systems to monitor and assess the effectiveness of the suppliers’ animal handling practices.” Although McDonald’s claims to have a global plan for abattoirs (addressed more fully below—there is no such plan), it does not claim to have any standards for raising or transporting animals and notably does not claim to have any systems to monitor and assess efficacy even of the abattoir plan outside the U.S. and U.K. The animal welfare plans detailed on McDonald’s Web site accentuate the lack of any similar plan anywhere else in the world. Furthermore, in Europe (and everywhere else), there is no indication that “outside experts” are used.
 Third, McDonald’s Also Has No Global Abattoir Plan
In direct contradiction to McDonald’s claim that its abattoir audit plan “is global in scope and is detailed on the company’s Web site,” there is no indication of any global abattoir plan on its Web site. One assumes that McDonald’s is referring to its “Guiding Principles,” which sound nice but are far from being a plan, as discussed above. The following statement clearly claims that McDonald’s global plan is detailed by Dr. Grandin in the referenced paper: “Since 1999, many audits have been completed in abattoir facilities, including facilities in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific. The effectiveness of the company’s audit program was highlighted by Dr. Grandin in a paper presented at the National Institute of Animal Agriculture on April 4, 2001”). This paper is indeed on Dr. Grandin’s Web site (www.Grandin.com), but it discusses exclusively McDonald’s audit program in the U.S. Although Dr. Grandin has visited slaughterhouses in the U.S. (called, by McDonald’s, “North America”), the U.K. (called “Europe”), and Australia (called “Asia/Pacific”), there is no indication that she, or anyone else, has done audits for McDonald’s in any other country. Had she done so, one can assume that McDonald’s would, as it says is essential to any animal welfare program, detail said progress on its Web site. It doesn’t.
Ironically, Dr. Grandin’s paper is a good argument for requiring audits of all meat suppliers internationally (something McDonald’s has not done), indicating that without audits, slaughterhouses will inevitably abuse animals. Clearly, that McDonald’s claims its Guiding Principles apply internationally means nothing at all, since McDonald’s has not done a thing to implement them in most of the world. The Proponents appreciate that McDonald’s considers Dr. Grandin to be the “leading global authority” on these matters; it might, then, take her word for it that if McDonald’s has no plan to audit suppliers in most of the world, animals will be abused.
 McDonald’s Has a History of Making False Claims Regarding Animal Welfare
McDonald’s has a history of being less than entirely candid where animal welfare is concerned. When McDonald’s sued two activists for libel over statements that included an impugning of McDonald’s commitment to animal welfare in the U.S. and U.K., in addition to finding that McDonald’s is responsible for animal cruelty, Chief Justice Bell held that “McDonald’s and the Humane Treatment of Animals” statement on animal welfare “reads more like a public relations handout than a serious policy statement …” and that its “policy statement on animal welfare was for the consumption of the public who might ask about it rather than for the consumption of suppliers who might have some effect on detailed animal welfare.”
Of course, PETA and Trillium Asset Management do not take issue with McDonald’s very satisfactory statement on animal welfare. But, as discussed in Dr. Grandin’s article that is cited by McDonald’s, unless there are audits, suppliers will abuse animals.
Conclusion: A Request for Your Support
Please reread McDonald’s statement that began this document or read McDonald’s proxy justification for opposing the resolution. McDonald’s appears to agree with PETA and Trillium Asset Management that the humane treatment of farmed animals is essential and that its program should be global in scope. If McDonald’s is serious, it should wholeheartedly support our resolution, which asks only for a detailed report on progress toward a comprehensive farmed animal welfare plan.
We respectfully ask that you write to McDonald’s CEO Jack Greenberg, requesting that he pledge to work with McDonald’s Farmed Animal Welfare committee to internationalize farmed animal welfare standards, with a pledge of detailed annual reports on the company’s progress—McDonald’s should have one section on farmed animal welfare, with each country or region addressed in a comprehensive way, with testimony from Dr. Grandin or McDonald’s independent panel regarding progress.
If McDonald’s refuses to do this on its own, we request your support for our shareholder proposal at the annual meeting in May 2003.
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