Burger King Legal Issues - Legal Disputes & Agreements - Animal Welfare

Animal Welfare

Further information: Burger King products article, purchasing guidelines section

In 2001, the animal rights group PETA began targeting fast food chains in the United States regarding the treatment of chickens by suppliers such as Tyson Foods. Using parodies of corporate logos and slogans, the group sought to publicly embarrass the companies into changing their corporate policies in dealing with their poultry suppliers. After winning concessions from McDonald's with its "McCruelty" campaign, the group targeted Burger King with a six-month campaign it called Murder King. The group and its supporters, with the backing of celebrities including Alec Baldwin, James Cromwell, and Richard Pryor, staged protests outside Burger King restaurants across the United States, calling on the company to establish these new compliance guidelines. On June 28, 2001, Burger King entered into an agreement with the group and established a contractual framework that defined procedures to ensure that its suppliers were conforming to the agreed-upon standards of animal welfare. These changes, along with the company's new vegetarian offering, the BK Veggie sandwich, drew praise from the group.

In 2006, PETA went before Burger King's board of directors during its parent company's annual corporate meeting to request that poultry suppliers switched to a more humane method of slaughter called controlled atmosphere killing (CAK). Instead of using its previous tactic of stating that the procedure is more humane, the group claimed that CAK was economically more feasible as it reduces the chances of injury to workers in poultry factories and it produces better products by preventing injury to the animal. Responding to the proposal in March 2007, Burger King announced it would make further changes to its animal welfare policies. The new policies favor suppliers of chickens that utilize CAK rather than electric shock to knock birds unconscious before slaughter, and require its pork and poultry suppliers to upgrade the living conditions of pigs and chickens. Under the agreement, 2% of BK's North American egg suppliers are to use cage-free produced eggs and 10% of pork suppliers are to use crate-free pigs for its pork products. PETA and the Humane Society of the United States were quoted as saying that Burger King’s initiatives put it ahead of its competitors in terms of animal rights and welfare and that they were hopeful that the new initiatives would trigger reform throughout the fast food industry as a whole.