McDonald's Open Farms

19 May 2010 – Frances Buckingham

Interested to see today that McDonald’s is opening its farms to the public as part of a PR campaign in the run up to the London 2012 Olympic Games. Selected consumers will be able to observe some of the British and Irish farms that supply beef and eggs to McDonald’s Restaurants in the UK. Does this raise the bar for supply chain transparency and existing brand initiatives that enable consumers to trace goods back to their origins (Kenco, Patagonia Footprint Chronicles, Trace My Coke) or should we just accept it as simply the public relations exercise that it is? In terms of transparency for obvious logistical reasons the offer of visiting farms only extends to British & Irish farms and not to the viewing the living conditions of chicken reared for meat which McDonald’s buys from cheaper foreign suppliers. For me therein lies the problem, from what I have seen of British farms and what I know about animal welfare standards in the UK – amongst the highest in Europe – I don’t think there is too much to be concerned about in the supply chain. That level of confidence does not follow for cheaper meat imports. As a consumer that is where I would have questions about provenance, quality and sustainability.

That said this initiative does tie in nicely with the work my colleagues in San Francisco are doing for the 2010 Sustainable Brands conference where they are running a session which will give perspectives on restoring some of the “places and faces” to the food value chain as a way of ensuring sustainability, traceability and quality. While I don’t expect many companies to follow suite opening up factories, processing plants and farms to ‘consumer audits’ I applaud McDonald’s initiative, even if it is only PR, that puts a face and a place to the source of some of its ingredients.