2006 CSR Fellows
Update – Improving the sustainability of our beef
In 2005, we invited a group of six students from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley to become CSR Fellows and explore the McDonald’s U.S. beef supply chain system from the inside out. Then we published their insights, impressions and recommendations in our 2006 Worldwide Corporate Responsibility Report. Our global and regional supply chain leaders continue to address many of the sustainability issues they raised by working with our suppliers and the beef industry.
In addition to supporting our direct suppliers in the work that they do to become more sustainable, we try to use our influence to improve the indirect parts of our supply chain and to raise the standards of the beef industry as a whole. At the global level, we hosted a gathering of global beef industry leaders in 2007 and invited an animal health expert and an expert from an environmental NGO to share their views on the most critical sustainability issues for the industry. We also invited some of our European beef suppliers to share outcomes of specific improvements they have implemented to reduce the environmental impacts of their processing facilities. At regional and local levels, many of these priorities and ideas are being acted upon. For example:
Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa (APMEA)
Supplier Australian Food Corporation (AFC), a subsidiary of Keystone Foods that supplies beef patties for Australia, Japan and Indonesia, has been using our environmental scorecard for nearly three years to measure and reduce environmental impacts. In 2007, AFC reduced water use per unit of product by 30% through such activities as collecting rain water in tanks and installing new belts that are easier to clean on equipment.
Europe
McDonald’s Europe has invested in a three-year Flagship Farms project. The aim of the project is to establish direct dialogue with progressive farmers and facilitate the sharing of initiatives and ideas across a wider producer/supplier network, beginning with beef suppliers. The hope is that such dialogue will identify genuine working solutions to current issues in animal welfare and environmental practices in food production. The Flagship Farms will be positioned as case studies to share within the McDonald’s Europe supply chain, demonstrating best practices that are scientifically underpinned and recognized by relevant NGOs.
Latin America
Supplier Braslo/OSI supported a McDonald’s animal welfare training session by Dr. Temple Grandin and Erika Voogd in São Paulo, Brazil in December 2007. The session included more than 100 participants from South America, including McDonald's suppliers, representatives from abattoirs that support the McDonald’s supply chain, national government representatives and McDonald's quality assurance staff. The Brazilian government was so impressed with the training that it invited McDonald’s Brazil’s animal welfare advisor, Daniel Boer from OSI, to participate in an ongoing Animal Welfare Technical Group to improve overall animal welfare standards in Brazil.
North America
McDonald’s USA has used and will continue to use purchasing preferences to support suppliers that advance innovative solutions to reducing waste and other environmental impacts. For example, supplier Beef Products Inc. (BPI) is a lead investor in the construction of a new biodiesel plant in South Sioux City, Nebraska. Once completed, in 2009, the plant will turn 100% of the 8 million pounds of high-grade beef tallow produced each week, as a byproduct of the ground beef production process, at BPI’s nearby beef processing plant into diesel fuel. Other suppliers are developing methane systems for energy generation.