Does McDonalds Get the Message?

Lately we’ve been discussing food safety and how local food grown by small farmers is, in most cases, the safest. And now we have the recent story of how McDonalds dumped eggs for its Egg McMuffins, eggs that were produced in nearby Iowa, Minnesota, and Colorado. This is the story of Sparboe, the company that produces eggs for all McDonalds restaurants west of the Mississippi River, so they say.

Mercy for Animals, an animal rights group, smuggled cameras into several facilities and documented male chicks being suffocated, hens in cramped cages, and chickens being debeaked, fairly standard practices in the egg industry. Sparboe responded by identifying four employees they determined were responsible for the inhumane treatment and firing them. As though four low level workers were responsible when the company produces 300 million eggs a year. You can read more of this story here.

So we’ll be watching McDonalds to see what they use for replacement eggs. Do they link up with another industrial egg producer, or do they buy local eggs from local farmers who treat chickens with respect? Stay tuned.