Yesterday McDonald's announced it has created a council to improve chicken welfare and sustainability goals in its supply chain. In fact, it's called the Chicken Sustainability Advisory Council and its job will be to advise the corporation on sourcing humanely raised chicken as part of the corporation's Scale for Good project. Currently, McDonald's works with Tyson and Cargill, two of their chicken suppliers.
Since 2016, McDonald's has phased out sourcing chickens tainted with antibiotics. All of these initiatives are assumed to be motivated by a desire to please the Generation Z customer. McDonald's has also faced pressure from animal welfare advocacy groups.
McDonald's plans to phase out foam packaging by the end of 2018 and to source its packaging entirely from renewable and recycled sources by 2025. These aren't bad initiatives but remember that they have come about because of the pressures of market competition, not government regulation.
Note that this McDonald's venn (which is not exhaustive†) is smaller than those of Walmart and Apple. This is significant when we remember that lobbying for industry regulations is done primarily to reduce competition as regulations are more expensive for smaller or newer firms in any industry. Regulations also serve as a barrier to entry for new firms that might be looking to penetrate any particular industry.
† None of the venns are exhaustive. They tend to focus on lobbying done only in the prior year and including federal employees who worked in government during the last 20 years.
