June/July
2002
Would
you Like Fries with those Lies?
The Satya Interview with Bruce
Friedrich
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Last year McDonald’s made the unprecedented announcement
that they would establish animal welfare guidelines and hold its U.S.
suppliers
accountable for following them and terminate contracts with those who
failed unannounced audits. This was largely in response to a two-year
campaign that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and
thousands of activists maintained against the fast food giant. Last
month America’s largest grocery chain, Safeway, also announced
its concessions to PETA’s demands for the more humane treatment
of the animals who are raised in factory farms and whose body parts
are sold in their stores. Last month McDonald’s shareholders voted
on a PETA proposal to apply the animal welfare guidelines to its suppliers
worldwide.
Bruce Friedrich is PETA’s Director of Vegan Outreach and is a well-known
voice among animal activists. Bruce took a moment out of his busy schedule
to talk to Catherine Clyne about recent developments in PETA’s
McDonald’s campaign.
What has the relationship been between animal rights and McDonald’s?
The longest-running trial in British history—civil or criminal—was,
as dubbed by the press, the McLibel trial. McDonald’s sued Dave
Morris and Helen Steel, a couple of unemployed activists for the “What’s
wrong with McDonald’s” flyer that they handed out [see interview
with Morris in Satya, May 1997]. The judge’s verdict, handed down
in June of 1997, held that in about half a dozen ways, McDonald’s
was culpably responsible for animal cruelty. By the judge’s definition,
that meant that any reasonable person would hold these practices to
be cruel and abusive to the animals involved despite the fact that they
were legal. The responsibility had to do with whether McDonald’s
could prevent the practices of its suppliers, and the judge ruled that
with regard to certain parts of animal agriculture, McDonald’s
used few enough suppliers that it could be held to be culpably responsible
for cruelty.
Tell us about PETA’s relationship with McDonald’s.
At that point we wrote a letter to McDonald’s headquarters distilling
the verdict into the key issues, and we held press conferences around
the country with videos of the “standard agricultural practices.”
McDonald’s was doing audits of its cattle and pig suppliers and
beginning to do audits of its chicken suppliers, but was refusing to
give us any timeline for severing ties with suppliers who failed audits.
McDonald’s just refused to do anything to improve life for even
one animal. It’s sort of like monitoring how many people are speeding,
but never giving a speeding ticket—it doesn’t give any incentive
for people to stop. So we launched a campaign to try to push some things
out of McDonald’s, throughout which we remained in contact with
them, as well as with their animal welfare panel.
After about 11 months, McDonald’s agreed to an array of improvements,
including an end to forced molting of hens, which involves starving
the hens for up to two weeks to shock their bodies into another laying
cycle. They agreed to audit all of their chicken, cattle and pig slaughterhouses,
and to sever ties with any of the slaughterhouses that failed audits.
Dr. Temple Grandin, [a humane slaughter systems specialist and a member
of the McDonald’s animal welfare panel], told the BBC that she
had seen more improvements during the campaign’s final six months
than she had seen in her previous 20 years, which is significant because
she had been working for McDonald’s on the issue for more than
five years at that point.
So, would you say that a lot of it had to do with PETA?
Well, you know we don’t really care whether any of it had to do
with PETA. Back in 1994, Henry Spira had gotten them to convene their
animal welfare panel and start auditing slaughterhouses. We launched
our campaign in 1999, at which point they had still done nothing. Then
in early September, McDonald’s announced new guidelines with an
array of improvements, at which point we got them to make some clarifications,
including making sure that they were going to have independent auditors
with regard to chicken cage space. McDonald’s is the number one
buyer of eggs in the country. They moved from an industry average of
seven or eight hens per cage, to a maximum of five hens per cage (last
year, four undercover investigations found ten and 11 hens per cage,
so the industry is probably lying about their average), and the death
rates fell from almost 20 percent down to two or three percent per year.
For those who are alive, that’s a significant improvement.
What kinds of actions were the most effective with McDonald’s?
That’s very hard to gauge, but I think it was public pressure and
grassroots that really did it. The fact that we had hundreds of demonstrations
in front of McDonald’s restaurants; celebrity involvement, which
generated massive media interest; activists who were making phone calls
and writing letters: all of these certainly helped. I think having people
standing in front of stores passing out unhappy meals, holding signs
that show [Ronald McDonald] done up like a Satanic bloody butcher, is
probably not something a corporation wants to have happening. And McDonald’s
was claiming that they cared about animal welfare, while they were being
called on the fact that they wouldn’t even address the most egregious
abuse, even if there was unanimity among their animal welfare panel
on the issue. So they finally decided that they would have to make the
change.
Tell us about the proposal that was recently voted on by McDonald’s
shareholders.
The animal welfare plan of last year was groundbreaking in the U.S.—it
was the first time any major corporation, or major entity period, had
ever done anything for farmed animals. But after the Animal Alliance
of Canada and a coalition of 40 animal groups contacted McDonald’s
about making animal welfare improvements in Canada, we submitted a shareholder
resolution calling on McDonald’s to internationalize its standards.
McDonald’s then convened its animal welfare panel and talked about
Canada and internationalization for the first time. In April they actually
announced a farmed animal welfare program for Canada, clearly in response
to our shareholder proposal, but it’s way too little, too late.
It involves some audits but no plan for severing ties with suppliers
who fail audits. It involves attempting to expand bird cage space, but
no indication of what the likelihood of that is, or by when they will
have that done. Nothing on chicken or pig slaughter, nothing on forced
molting, and nothing on transparency—letting everybody know what’s
going on.
Did you encounter resistance from McDonald’s?
[They tried to block our resolution from being proposed to shareholders,
and we challenged them for the right to do so.] In early April, the
Bush administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC]
ruled with PETA. McDonald’s claimed that our resolution was redundant,
but based on ample documentation, the SEC handed us a victory allowing
us to bring the resolution—which was really quite huge, considering
this is a Bush SEC. But it’s still far from being passed. We got
five percent—millions of shares—which is a real coup considering
the vitriol that the board brought to opposing the resolution. Now,
we can propose it again next year.
But McDonald’s is still fighting it, right? If they were so
interested in improving animal welfare in the U.S., why wouldn’t
they do it internationally?
It’s perplexing to us especially because their claim is that they’re
already doing it. I could see them opposing it, saying it’s cost-prohibitive,
or because there are cultural issues that need to be respected; there
are a lot of arguments that are somewhat tenable. But their arguments
are [simply] lies—they haven’t already done it, we have their
own paper trail to prove it.
Well, in the proxy, it’s very clear why the board suggested voting
against this. Let me play devil’s advocate here. Their public relations
vice president, Bob Langert, summed it up in the proposal given to shareholders
last month, which I quote: “No longer are extremists driving the
debate. Mainstream consumers are the primary force. Newspapers and television
stations around the world have reported extensively on animal welfare
campaigns and our company’s animal welfare standards.” Most
revealing is: “Animal rights activists have not targeted our company
in any concerted way since McDonald’s adopted guidelines and enforced
them more than one year ago.”
Basically, they no longer feel pressured by activists, they’re
not getting bad press, and it’s not in the public’s eye, so
they don’t need to do it. What’s PETA’s response to this
and where is PETA going with the campaign now?
Well, Langert hasn’t used that argument when we’ve talked
with him, and it’s a strange argument to make, considering that
we easily could re-launch our campaign against McDonald’s.
Is it a challenge from him?
I don’t know what to make of it. It’s remarkable to me that
so many of these corporate public relations people seem to do such a
bad job of public relations. We are talking about a corporation that
had its last successful product introduction in 1983 with Chicken McNuggets,
and thought it would be a good idea to sue two unemployed activists.
As you know, some Satya readers, taking an abolitionist stance,
feel that any effort to change an institution like McDonald’s,
which profits from animal misery, is wasted energy, or worse, part of
the problem. What do you want to say to them?
I can’t remember the precise number, but something like 99 percent
of Americans eat fast food; certainly fewer than one percent are vegans.
I think that it does the animals a great disservice to put one’s
personal purity ahead of having a practical, positive effect for animals
who are suffering. If I were a chicken in a battery cage, I would want
to move from an amount of space that kills a fifth of my bretheren to
a space that kills one fiftieth; that is a real improvement in conditions.
If I were a chicken in a slaughterhouse, I would want the “stun
baths” turned up to a level that actually kills the majority of
the animals who go through them, so that myself and others wouldn’t
still be conscious when our throats were slit and we were scalded alive.
Unfortunately, we aren’t in a place where the vast majority of
people are on the precipice of going vegan tomorrow, and these are improvements
that are necessary.
These campaigns also allow us to talk to people. What I’ve found
is that people are really receptive to having conversations about egregious
abuse of farmed animals when they don’t feel so on the spot; then
you are able to point out that anybody eating meat, dairy or eggs is
supporting animal cruelty. And once corporations like McDonald’s
and Safeway are saying that birds have interests that have to be respected,
that some of these standard agricultural practices are abusive, it really
does beg the question in people’s minds—what are we doing
eating these animals at all? I think that these sorts of campaigns,
whether they’re one-on-one or grand-scale media interaction, they
reach people in a way that a lot of other campaigns can’t.
Some people might argue that PETA spends too much time focusing on McDonald’s
and promoting the BK Veggie burger and what not, when PETA should be
encouraging people to support vegan businesses. What’s PETA’s
response to that?
It’s interesting what becomes the public face of PETA. We have
spent almost nothing on promoting the BK veggie; we certainly do want
it to be successful, but the vast majority of what PETA does doesn’t
generate media attention, so people often gauge ‘What is PETA?’
by what does get media attention.
We sent out about 150,000 free vegetarian starter kits last year and
the most popular vegan video is our “Meet Your Meat” video,
which some activists are now passing out on CD ROM. We don’t copyright
anything. We encourage activists to take our literature, copy it and
get it out there. In every instance our goal is to speak out for the
animals who have no voice. We support anybody who’s doing anything
to advance the cause of animal liberation and we do what we think is
going to be most effective.
I haven’t seen anything that comes close to being as effective
at promoting veganism or at actually saving animals from suffering as
these campaigns. I’m sure you’ve heard that Peter Singer called
the McDonald’s concession the best thing for farmed animals in
the U.S. since he wrote Animal Liberation. I think that’s true
both for the individual animals and for promoting veganism in general.
So, what’s ahead?
It’s tough to know for sure. We’ll continue to pressure McDonald’s
to internationalize their standards, which would improve conditions
for billions of animals, and shift the industry to follow their lead.
We’ll attempt to reach out to Kroger and Albertson’s, WalMart
and other grocery chains to make concessions similar to those that we
got at Safeway, and we’ll continue to attempt to come up with new
and innovative ways to promote animal rights. We just got the NCAA to
stop using leather basketballs, which is pretty fantastic—you get
just a few basketballs out of each cow, and they use a lot of basketballs.
So we’re continuing to push forward in our grassroots campaigning,
even as we attempt to work through legislation and direct, hands-on
interaction with animals in all kinds of situations.
How can Satya readers help?
There are so many things that people can do to promote veganism and
vegetarianism. There’s a “What you can do” section of
goveg.com with suggestions like writing letters to local papers, passing
out leaflets in front of restaurants, etc. But really all of us can
take an hour and, instead of watching television, go and pass out leaflets.
All of us can contact our local college or university and arrange to
have people give talks or classes on animal rights. All of us can stand
with a sign in front of any restaurant that’s serving meat, or
design a banner and stand over a bridge during rush hour.
I’m very excited about the idea of taking TVs out to clubs or festivals
or even street corners. I’ve been going out a lot with Compassion
Over Killing’s FaunaVan in Washington, DC. People will take the
information and watch the “Meet Your Meat” video and leave,
some saying they’ll never eat meat again. In San Francisco, a woman
with the Food and Social Justice project has a generator and a TV/VCR.
In just four hours on a Friday or Saturday night, she passes out five
or six hundred leaflets to people who would otherwise not have been
thinking about this issue. So many things we can do don’t even
take much time—carrying around PETA’s Vegetarian Starter kit
or Vegan Outreach’s “Why Vegan?”, and leaving them on
the train or airplane or wherever; people will pick it up and read it.
You don’t even know what kind of positive effect you’re having
without any additional effort.
I also really like that the Food and Social Justice Project in San Francisco
is teaching cooking classes. One of the reasons people are not vegetarians
is they get into a rut, they know how to cook the 13 meals that they
base their diet on. If you could get them to switch a couple of vegetarian
or vegan meals into those 13 meals, that’s a real victory, even
if they haven’t gone completely vegan: it decreases the number
of animals that are eaten, it decreases the amount of suffering for
the animals.
To learn more about PETA’s work, to see what you can do to help
fast food and grocery chains adopt guidelines for the humane treatment
of farmed animals, or to order a free veggie starter kit, visit peta.org
or call (757) 622-7382 (PETA). For a detailed account of PETA’s
McDonald’s campaign, visit McCruelty.com.
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