Collaborating to protect rainforests
Another successful sustainability effort is our work with Greenpeace and others to address the problem of rainforest destruction related to soya production in Brazil. It built on our previous commitment in 1989 to refuse beef sourced from recently deforested rainforest areas.
In April 2006, Greenpeace published a major report called “Eating Up the Amazon,” describing how soya farmers in Brazil were cutting down virgin forest to grow soy beans. Greenpeace criticized McDonald’s largest European Chicken McNugget supplier (Sun Valley Foods, owned by Cargill) for feeding soya from recently deforested Amazon land to its chickens. The report publicly asked companies like McDonald’s to work with their suppliers to stop using soya from vulnerable parts of the Amazon.
We weren’t aware of these practices in the Amazon, so we were caught by surprise. We felt it was our responsibility to explore the issue further. Our support of the rainforest was clear through our beef policy, so we immediately invited Greenpeace to meet with us to help us better understand the nature of the situation and identify possible solutions. After hearing more from Greenpeace and some of our other NGO partners, we agreed we needed to play a role in the development of a sustainable solution.
Working to develop a sustainable solution
The challenge was finding a solution that could influence actions so far removed from our direct suppliers. McDonald’s buying power was relatively small, less than 1% of soya purchases in the region. Additionally, we had to make sure all interests were respected, from both a global and local sustainability perspective. It quickly became clear that a meaningful solution required an industry-wide effort. So, we reached out to our partners and advisors for help - McDonald’s global, European, and Brazilian leadership, Cargill, NGOs, and some other large European food retailers - to urge all Brazilian soy producers and exporters to come together and create a solution.
By late July 2006, all major soya buyers announced their commitment to a two-year moratorium on purchasing soya from deforested areas in the Amazon region. In June 2008, the same group, with the support of the Brazilian government, decided to extend the moratorium through July 23, 2009. This extension will support the development of a more transparent, independent and enforceable plan for monitoring and halting agriculture-related deforestation.
An in-depth case study on this effort - “McDonald’s Corporation: Managing a Sustainable Supply Chain” - was published by Harvard Business School in 2007.
We will continue to work with our suppliers to follow progress on this program and apply lessons learned from this collaboration to other difficult agriculture sustainability issues. We are currently working to address the challenge of deforestation related to palm oil, and our goal moving forward is to find an actionable way to extend our position related to deforestation to all products in our supply chain.