Shine OnBurger King commits to cage-free animal products
We all have our own ethical standards when it comes to selecting the foods we buy at the grocery store, but have you ever stopped and thought about the standards of the restaurants you're eating at?
Burger King, the world's second-largest fast-food restaurant, will make grabbing a quick burger a little easier on our collective consciousness, as the chain has vowed to make the switch to using only cage-free chickens and pigs for its egg and pork products by 2017, reports Businessweek. And that's no small feat for a company that uses hundreds of millions of eggs and tens of millions of pounds of pork annually.
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"So many tens of thousands of animals will now be in better living conditions," says Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, in a statement. "Numerically this is significant because Burger King is such a big purchaser of these products."
The company has already begun its conversion process, alongside the growth of the cage-free animal product industry, reports Businessweek, with 9 per cent of its eggs and 20 per cent of its pork that are currently cage-free.
"We believe this decision will allow us to leverage our purchasing power to ensure the appropriate and proper treatment of animals by our vendors and suppliers," says Burger King's chief brand and operations officer Jonathan Fitzpatrick to Businessweek.
Hens are traditionally kept in cramped cages that don't allow them space to move and pigs are housed in very narrow crates, reports CBC News. Burger King's cage-free promise means that although the animals will still be kept indoors, hens will have nesting boxes, perches and more room to roam, and pregnant sows won't be confined to crate-living.
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Some wonder what a decision like this will do to a company's bottom line, as more space generally equals higher costs, but others say such a socially responsible move ends up paying for itself.
"It's proven that consumers are willing to pay a little bit more for fairness, whether it's to humans or animals," says food industry analyst Phil Lempert to CBC News.
In the business world, it's all about competition. The best part about Burger King's latest announcement is that it will undoubtedly raise the bar for other companies, large and small, to take more social responsibility for their product offerings and work to meet consumers' increasing demands for more humanely generated animal products.
Does Burger King's decision make you more likely to eat at the fast-food chain? How do you think this will affect the fast-food industry as a whole?
Take a look at the news video below about some recent cases of mad cow disease in California.
