Published on: June 4, 2016

The beef industry is tremendously important to our economy, so it’s encouraging to see McDonald’s Canada work with producers to ensure they’ll always have a hungry market for their product.

The company, which buys all the beef for its Canadian restaurants within the country, committed in 2014 to start buying some of its beef from verifiable sustainable sources in 2016. To its credit, McDonald’s took a co-operative approach, declining to set a target on the amount of sustainable beef it would insist upon, or even define what would qualify for the increasingly important designation.

The result was a two-year pilot project involving 182 participants, including ranchers, feedlots, processors and a hamburger patty plant. Each of them was required to submit to third-party verification to prove their beef is produced in accordance with principles such as environmental responsibility, animal health, food safety, worker safety, community responsibility and innovation.

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Now the industry needs to decide the pathway forward
Posted: June 2, 2016

​It had the feel of a warm family gathering with a slight undercurrent of anxiousness. Beef producers involved in McDonald's Verified Sustainable Beef Pilot gathered in Calgary, Alta. at the invitation of the program sponsor to hear firsthand the details of the project final report. And to be thanked by the sponsor for their efforts in an industry first, a clear sense they were being feted as pioneers of a new era of production.

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By Tim Hardman

Canadian ranchers have taken an important step to strengthen their country’s beef supply chain and to protect grasslands. They joined with beef producers and processors to participate in McDonald’s first-of-its-kind program to promote production practices that are more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable.

This is critical because beef production has both positive and negative environmental impacts. On the one hand, it takes more land, water, and energy to produce one pound of beef than a pound of poultry, pork, or even soy. On the other hand, unlike chickens and pigs, cattle can turn inedible grass into edible protein and help maintain grasslands in the process.
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