McDonald’s Concludes Sustainable Beef Pilot in Canada

CANADA - McDonald’s Canada has announced the successful conclusion of its Verified Sustainable Beef Pilot, an industry-first.
calendar icon 3 June 2016
clock icon 2 minute read

As one of the country’s largest Canadian beef purchasers, McDonald’s Canada, through the Pilot tracked the journey of nearly 9,000 head of Canadian cattle, or the equivalent of 2.4 million patties. The cattle spent their entire lives, from ‘birth to burger’, raised on or handled by verified sustainable operations.

McDonald's said the Pilot demonstrated that not only can sustainable practices and outcomes be verified through the entire Canadian beef supply chain (from farm to processing), cattle from verified sustainable beef operations can also be tracked through these operations.

The Verified Sustainable Beef Pilot Project in Canada is the first programme to make the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB) principles and criteria actionable across the entire beef value chain.

The Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (CRSB) said it is building on the Pilot work undertaken by McDonald's to develop a sustainability verification framework, which should be in place by the end of 2017 after further trial work.

“Without a doubt, this has been a very constructive exercise,” noted CRSB Chair, Cherie Copithorne-Barnes. “We are excited to be in a position to carry this work forward.”

“The McDonald’s pilot highlighted the value of testing the verification framework in an iterative manner,” said Fawn Jackson, Executive Director of the CRSB.

“The Pilot accelerated CRSB’s progress in developing a beef sustainability framework by testing and sharing important learnings about framework management, participant enrolment, indicator development, scoring and performance levels, verification/assurance processes, chain of custody and information sharing.”

McDonald's Canada personnel said in a statement that the company is committed to continued leadership in the field of sustainable beef, as well as continuing to source 100 per cent Canadian beef.

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