NRN: McDonald’s Forms Council to Improve Chicken Welfare

McDonald’s has announced the creation of Chicken Sustainability Advisory Council, a consortium dedicated to helping the franchise source humanely raised chickens and ensuring suppliers meet sustainability goals.

A recent article in NRN notes that the council, which includes suppliers, genetics experts, sustainability advisors and university academics, will advise McDonald’s corporate team on practices to meet the brand’s own sustainability goals. One of those goals, according to a statement McDonald’s released on Monday, is to “require chickens to be raised in housing environments that promote natural behaviors such as pecking, perching and dust-bathing on or before 2024.”

The article adds, "McDonald’s works with multiple chicken broiler suppliers such as Tyson Foods, Keystone and Cargill. Since 2016, U.S. McDonald’s restaurants have phased outsourcing chickens treated with antibiotics important to human medicine. Starting this year, McDonald’s will move to start globally eliminating chicken treated with antibiotics defined as high priority by the World Health Organization. The global goal for eliminating this supply is 2027."