McDonald's to switch to cage-free eggs over next decade

McDonald's to about-face to cage-free eggs over next decade, McDonald's says it will about-face to cage-free eggs in the U.S. and Canada over the next decade, appearance the latest advance beneath CEO Steve Easterbrook to try and reinvent the Big Mac maker as a "modern, accelerating burger company."

Under burden to animate crumbling sales, McDonald's has already appear a amount of changes back Easterbrook stepped into his role beforehand this year. In March, the Oak Brook, Illinois aggregation said it would about-face to chickens aloft after a lot of antibiotics. And in April, it said it would accession pay for workers at company-owned stores, which represent about 10 percent of its calm locations.

The accommodation to about-face to cage-free eggs, meanwhile, signals a growing acuteness a allotment of barter to beastly abundance issues. That has been fueled in allotment by places like Chipotle that accept fabricated beastly abundance standards allotment of their marketing.

Animal abundance activists aswell accept continued alleged for the adjournment of array cages, which confine hens to spaces so baby they're almost able to move. For at atomic the accomplished 10 years, the Humane Society of the United States has apprenticed McDonald's to about-face to cage-free eggs at the company's anniversary shareholders meeting, said Paul Shapiro, the group's carnality admiral of acreage and beastly protection.

"It's a absolute watershed moment," Shapiro said of the accommodation by McDonald's. "It makes it clearer than anytime that cages just do not accept a approaching in the egg industry."

While cage-free doesn't beggarly cruelty-free or admission to the outdoors, Shapiro said it's a abundant advance from array cages.

Regulatory changes could aswell be authoritative it easier for companies to accede to change. In California, a law now requires that egg-laying hens be accustomed abundant amplitude to stretch, about-face about and accessory their wings.

Among the companies that accept said they will about-face to cage-free eggs are Subway and Starbucks, although neither of those chains has laid out a timeline for if they apprehend the alteration to be complete.

Already, McDonald's says it buys about 13 actor cage-free eggs a year in the U.S. But that is still beneath than 1 percent of the 2 billion eggs it uses annually to accomplish card items such as Egg McMuffins. Overall, alone about 6 percent of the nation's egg-laying hens are cage-free, according to the United Egg Producers. Chad Gregory, CEO of the industry group, said he expects that amount to climb.

Marion Gross, chief carnality admiral of the North American accumulation alternation at McDonald's, said the aggregation is alive with its absolute egg suppliers to catechumen apartment systems for hens. Gross said she thinks the change will be "truly meaningful" to customers.

"They apperceive how big we are, and the appulse we can accomplish on the industry," Gross said.

McDonald' is aswell acceptable to access its egg purchasing over time; starting Oct. 6, the aggregation affairs to action baddest breakfast items all day in the U.S.
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