Wherever you are in the world, the first thing you are taught when you join our supply chain team is “our values”. These are the characteristics that have shaped McDonald’s strategic focus and relationship with our suppliers since the company started back in the 1950s. They are: transparency and trust, long-term relationships, a system-first approach, financial success for all and anticipatory issues management.
This operating model and culture is shared with our suppliers. It was originally set up to provide cost efficiencies, assure supply and product safety and enable the fast expansion of McDonald’s by enabling our suppliers to make a fair return, invest in their businesses and grow with us.
Ethical and economic sustainability
The basic principles are those of sustainability, although we didn’t call it that originally. Long term relationships and fair prices to enable suppliers to make profits - what is this if it is not ethical and economic sustainability? And now of course there is also a lot more focus on environmental sustainability.
Whilst we work on sustainability across our entire value chain, we know that our greatest impacts are in agriculture. We define sustainable agriculture as the ability to produce good quality, affordable food in ways that are socially and ethically acceptable, at the same time minimising our impact on ecosystems and our environment.
Our good practice matrix, which is available on our flagship farm website, describes in more detail the specific ethical, environmental and economic criteria that we take into consideration. Like most progressive companies, McDonald’s has a vision to source all of its food and packaging sustainably. Working with WWF, we have identified the raw materials we use globally that have the greatest environmental impacts. These are beef, chicken, wood fibre (for packaging) coffee, fish and palm oil.
Well on our way
Offering sustainably certified products is one way that we can fulfil our commitments. For example, all of our European coffee is already sourced from Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade or UTZ Certified farms and all of the fish for the 100m Filet-o-Fish we sell annually in Europe is from Marine Stewardship Council certified fisheries. On packaging we are a long way down the road to ensuring we use either recycled or certified wood fibre. For products such as beef, and chicken, widely agreed, independent sustainable production standards are not yet available.
Beef is a key ingredient in some of McDonald’s most iconic menu items. It has long been a priority for us and there are a number of programmes and initiatives aimed at addressing the issue of sustainable beef production, some of which have been running for more than a decade.
In 2001 we developed an agriculture standards and sourcing programme in cooperation with our suppliers, the McDonald’s Agricultural Assistance Programme (MAAP). We use it to drive continuous improvement and it enables us to monitor and manage traceability, food safety, quality, animal welfare and sustainability.
Identifying best practices
MAAP demonstrates our long-term commitment and investment in mainstream agriculture and in 2009 we launched Flagship Farms to profile some of the farms that supply McDonald’s with its key ingredients, and make case studies from across Europe available to all farmers. Run in conjunction with the Food Animal Initiative (FAI), it builds on MAAP by identifying the best sustainable agricultural practices in operation on commercial farms within the McDonald’s supply chain, including beef. Once we identify best practices, we look to incorporate them into our MAAP standards. We review them on an annual basis, taking into account revised industry guidelines and any current or emerging issues so that we can continue to drive improved performance.
However, we need to go further, and we know that by working with others we can achieve more. Therefore, in addition to building on our strong supplier relationships, we are collaborating with a range of organisations including farmers, NGO’s, producers and other retailers to establish a common understanding and agreement on how to produce sustainable beef.
A committed global network
The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform is a food industry initiative supporting the development of sustainable agriculture worldwide and over 50 global members work with millions of farmers around the world. I chair the SAI Platform Beef Working Group which was established to bring together a number of organisations to understand and find solutions to the sustainability challenges faced by the beef supply chain. Along with other members such as Unilever, Dawn Meats, McKey Food Service, OSI Food Solutions and Bord Bia we published our principles for sustainable beef farming in November last year.
The SAI platform is also a member of The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB), of which McDonald’s was also a founding member. The GRSB is a multi-stakeholder platform aimed at advancing sustainability throughout the global beef value chain. The Roundtable is composed of a diverse group of organisations including WWF, Walmart, Cargill, Rainforest Alliance and others, alongside the SAI .
I firmly believe that collaboration is the only way forward. Sustainability has to be seen as a pre-competitive issue if we truly want to make a difference and achieve our vision of mainstreaming sustainability and sourcing all of our food and packaging sustainably, so that our customers can continue to enjoy our menu items, such as the iconic Big Mac, long into the future.
Content on this page is paid for and provided by the Irish Food Board, supporter of the food hub.
