Objective Welfare Measurement
To meet our overarching vision of making meaningful and enduring improvement to the health and welfare of animals in our supply chain throughout their lives, McDonald’s requires that all facilities providing meat to pass a rigorous animal welfare audit. These audits, developed by leading animal behaviorist Dr. Temple Grandin, and adopted by the North American Meat Institute (NAMI) in the mid 1990’s, now serve as the foundation for beef and pork welfare auditing worldwide; poultry and eggs are audited using the National Chicken Council (NCC) and United Egg Producers (UEP) audit tools, respectively. In 2014, 99.8% of the facilities from which we source beef, poultry and pork passed audits for compliance with our standards.
For beef and pork, using the NAMI objective audit framework as our foundation, we’ve standardize welfare measurement at slaughter around the following outcomes: