Burger King has just announced an initiative to purchase 2% cage-free eggs and 10% of its pork from farms that allow sows “some room to move around.” As far as its Canadian and American suppliers are concerned, anyway. In Asia, anything still goes.
Nevertheless, the policy leaves the chain way behind other reduced-cruelty crusaders like Wolfgang Puck and Chipotle. One reason for the slow start is the higher price of humanely-raised meat, which the company is currently negotiating so its menu prices won’t change (read: BK is going all Wal-Mart on its suppliers and demanding lower prices, because it certainly wouldn’t want to keep the Hamlette Sandwich cheap by diverting money away from video games or an ad campaign featuring the world’s creepiest mascot).
An industry VP says that an increase in mindful consumers will require more companies to jump on the bandwagon – that’s right, this guy actually calls “social responsibility and social consciousness” a “bandwagon.” There are 285 million egg-laying hens and 63 million pigs in factory farms in the U.S., a country in which 9 billion chickens are raised and killed for meat annually. Keep an eye on that bandwagon, which, if it gets big enough, could cause changes of revolutionary proportions when industry giants may not be able to strong-arm farmers into selling their quality goods for less, and companies and consumers alike will finally have to admit that there’s not enough room on the planet to give the meat we eat “free-range.”
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