McDonald’s Agrees To Cage-Free Eggs
Written by Vegetarian Star on May 19th, 2011 in Animal Issues, Business, Food & Drink, Restaurants.
After years of debating with animal welfare groups like the Humane Society, McDonald’s Corp. has finally agreed to use some cage-free eggs for its restaurants.
According to the Chicago Tribune, McDonald’s will use one million cage-free eggs, but it doesn’t specify the time period those eggs will be purchased or whether the practice will begin immediately or be phased in.
President Don Thompson says McDonald’s cage-free volume will be larger than its competitors, but claims there aren’t enough producers churning out cage-free eggs to make a goal of going completely cage-free feasible.
“Only 5% of eggs in the industry are cage-free,” he said. “Even if we attempted to buy all the cage-free eggs, there wouldn’t be enough.” Some of McDonald’s competitors, such as Burger King and Wendy’s, already have or are phasing in cage-free eggs on their menus.
If McDonald’s were to transfer the costs of using cage-free eggs to its customers, one estimate is they’d be paying an average of 5 cents more. In an unscientific poll, most people were willing to pay up to 25 cents more for a product containing cage-free eggs.
Cage-free eggs are considered more humane because the hens have more room to move and perform natural behaviors like walking and spreading their wings. Cage-free is still not cruelty-free, as hens still have their beaks cut and are slaughtered at half their natural lifespan.
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May 19th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Now people have another reason to not go vegan & continue to eat & exploit animals. “Cage free” is not a victory – it will just make people more comfortable eating animals. This decision will benefit mcdonalds & increase the sale of eggs. This does NOTHING for the animals. We should not be celebrating this. Sad.
December 21st, 2011 at 3:30 pm
To the contrary, people are now, and have been throughout most of human history, as comfortable eating animals as they could ever be. Cage free isn’t going to make us more likely to eat animals. That’s silly. Cage free is a tremendous victory. The more cage free eggs consumed, the greater a market incentive for producers to switch to cage free, which leads to a quicker transition industry-wide to cage free and a quicker obsolescence of factory egg farming, which necessarily (and immediately) results in a systemic lessening of animal suffering. That is nothing short of grand. As for a world free of animal exploitation, it’s baby steps. One problem with the animal rights movement is that it’s dominated by liberals, who often come at such things from a doctrinal and purist angle, which leads to the ideological sectarianism and organizational breakdown that regularly plagues left-wing causes (e.g., militant vegans v. not-as-true vegetarians, etc.). If you truly care about ending animal suffering, and not in engaging in personal, Freudian ideological vendettas, then you should take a pragmatic and logical (albeit urgent) approach to these issues and see cage free for what it is: a remarkable, refreshing, culture-wide paradigm shift that demonstrates we’re making progress.