Fast-food giant McDonald’s lifts western ranchers
Canada’s largest beef buyer adopts favourable ‘sustainable’ standards
A decision by McDonald’s restaurants to adopt newly developed standards for beef production is a win for Western Canada’s beef industry, which has been facing increasing pressure from consumers over issues such as environmental protection and animal welfare.
The fast-food chain, Canada’s largest purchaser of beef, announced Wednesday that it will become the first company to source beef from Canadian farms and ranches that have been “certified sustainable,” according to standards set by the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. McDonald’s plans to begin with its Angus lineup and is pledging that over the next 12 months, more than 20 million burgers will be sourced according to the roundtable’s standards.
The move is a coup for the beef industry, which worked side-by-side with McDonald’s — and other partners such as beef processor Cargill, retail and food service companies, and environmental groups such as the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Ducks Unlimited — over a fouryear period to help develop Canadian standards for beef sustainability.
The company’s decision to work closely with producers differs from some of its competitors, which have made their own attempts to capture changing consumer demands but angered farmers and ranchers in the process.
Earls restaurant chain, for example, ignited so much fury in Alberta when it announced in 2016 it would switch to a U.S. supplier that could provide it with “certified humane” beef that it had to back down and commit again to finding a Canadian supplier.
“We need to thank McDonald’s,” Cherie Copithorne-Barnes, who ranches near Calgary and chairs the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, said Monday. “Thank them for having the faith and the confidence and the flexibility in letting us, as an industry, design what we need, but something which they’re still comfortable to use.”
When Earls landed in the beef industry’s crosshairs two years ago, part of what it was asking for was beef raised without the use of growth hormones or antibiotics. A&W also introduced beef produced without hormones or steroids — a move that led to recordbreaking sales for the fast-food chain but was criticized by ranchers who resented the implication that beef produced using mainstream agricultural practices is unhealthy.
The new standards being adopted by McDonald’s require farmers and ranchers to meet certain standards around grazing practices, watershed protection and animal care — but they don’t forbid producers from using antibiotics or growth hormones.
Copithorne-Barnes said with the quantity of beef McDonald’s uses, it doesn’t have the luxury to ask for a “niche product.” The vast majority of cattle production in Western Canada is still done with the use of antibiotics for preventive health and growth hormones for efficiency.
“What this (McDonald’s decision) does is it gives validity to the commodity beef we produce — the 90 per cent of beef that’s out there,” Copithorne-Barnes said. “It shows that this 90 per cent is just as good as everything else, it’s just a different type of production.”
McDonald’s Canada CEO John Betts — who was in Calgary for the announcement — said his company has gone the antibiotic-free route with its chicken menu items, in response to consumer demand. But he said in this case, the decision was made after listening to both customers and producers.
“You can’t be everything all at once, and I think what you’re seeing is an evolution across the industries,” Betts said.
He added he believes the new criteria have the potential to become the gold standard for beef production around the world.
“When we first got together with the producers and ranchers, they were somewhat wary,” he said. “But as the team developed the standards and did the work around this, it made us all better. It made them (the ranchers) better, and they got more enthusiastic about it … Some of the ranchers who were doing some of the components of what we consider beef sustainability already are now doing more because they shared with each other.”
The standards under the new program include more than 60 on-farm indicators that must be upheld by on-site certification audits.
Copithorne-Barnes said there is a cost to farmers and ranchers to go through the program, but she hopes that as more restaurants, retailers and consumers start to demand information about food production practices, certification will make economic sense.
“I hope this will get to a point where a processor like Cargill will actually have a whole line of beef that is certified sustainable,” she said. “The momentum’s definitely there right now for us to build on this and grow.”