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HSUS, PETA to address Yum!, McDonald's shareholders
May 19, 2010
Two animal rights groups will be addressing shareholders of the leading quick-service restaurant companies today at their annual meetings.
As shareholders themselves, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and The Humane Society of the United States will address McDonald's shareholders and urge them to vote for higher animal welfare standards. PETA also will address Yum! Brands' shareholders.
At McDonald's annual meeting today in Oak Brook, Ill., Paul Shapiro, senior director of HSUS' factory farming campaign, will urge shareholders to approve a resolution encouraging the chain to decrease its use of eggs from caged hens.
The HSUS' shareholder resolution asks the chain to commit to using 5 percent cage-free eggs in the United States. McDonald's announced last May it was in a joint commercial-scale study with leading animal welfare scientists, academics, non-government organizations and egg suppliers of housing alternatives for egg-laying hens in the United States, including cage-free housing. The company has yet to announce the results.
Several QSRs, including Burger King, Wendy's, Sonic, Subway, Hardee's, and Carl's Jr., have begun using cage-free eggs in their U.S. operations.
HSUS takes issue with the fact that McDonald's uses cage-free eggs in the United Kingdom and will use only cage-free whole eggs in the European Union by 2010.
PETA to protest, address McDonald's
PETA members wearing buttons emblazoned with "Stop McCruelty" and dressed in chicken costumes will greet McDonald's customers today. Other PETA members will hold signs that read, "Scalded Alive" and "Broken Wings and Legs." PETA wants the company to order its poultry suppliers to switch to controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK), a method the group advocates as a less cruel method of chicken slaughter compared to the traditional electrical water bath stunning used in U.S. poultry processing plants.
During the shareholding meeting, a representative of PETA, which owns stock in McDonald's, will speak in support of PETA's shareholder resolution calling on the company to switch to the alternate method. PETA cites research that the traditional method results in numerous instances of birds suffering broken wings and broken legs, having their throats cut while they are still conscious, or being scalded to death in defeathering tanks.
The National Chicken Council's Animal Welfare Guidelines forbid any such treatment. The guidelines state that leg breakage and live birds entering the defeathering tanks are unacceptable occurrences, and the goal is for less than 3 percent of the birds' wings to be broken or dislocated.
McDonald's independent research found that the traditional method is not less humane, and leading researchers have found that controlled-atmosphere stunning (CAS)may lead to birds suffering during the process. PETA advocates CAK, a type of CAS that kills the birds by removing oxygen from the atmosphere rather than stunning them, as most CAS methods do.
Several QSRs, including Burger King, Carl's Jr., Hardee's, Popeyes and Wendy's have indicated they would consider sourcing from suppliers using CAS methods if enough producers could meet their supply and quality standards. About 30 percent of McDonald's suppliers in Europe use the CAS method.
PETA addresses Yum!
At Yum! Brand's shareholder conference, a representative of PETA will question executives today asking why they "have ignored the recommendations of their own animal welfare advisors" as relates to poultry suppliers for KFC, according to a news release. PETA claims that a KFC advisor recommended that the company switch to CAK.
Like McDonald's, KFC says on its website that the company "continues to support and fund research into electrical stunning, CAS and other alternative methods of poultry stunning or slaughter." To that end, KFC and Yum! Brands Foundation fund a graduate assistantship at Mississippi State University researching animal welfare.
KFC and McDonald's have both ended discussions with PETA.
PETA to address WAG
PETA also will address Wendy's/Arby's Group shareholders on May 27, asking the company to follow through with a previous agreement to purchase all of its turkey from suppliers that use CAK by the end of 2010 and to require its chicken suppliers to switch to CAK within five years.
Several U.S. poultry producers do use CAS for turkey processing because the birds are much larger and heaver than chickens. The CAS method allows for the large birds to remain in their transport crates, making it easier to handle.
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