6-13 IAN McDonald's Pork

Public relations people. Sometimes they’re great but from my experience alone, sometimes it’s a racket.

Obviously in my job, I get tons of press releases. One of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that I would guess one out of 50 times that I call the PR person who put out the press release, the phone doesn’t get answered. So one out of 50? Where are they? One such event recently occurred when I got a press release about McDonald’s and pork. The headline read: Greetings from McDonald’s: We wanted you to be aware that today, McDonald’s USA announced a 10-year plan to work with pork suppliers to phase out the use of gestation stalls in our U.S. pork supply.

It then left contact information for a PR guy.  I called him up and asked him to define gestation stalls  and then asked why McDonald’s wanted to phase them out. He said that he would have someone for me to call shortly. But he also added in very strong terms he wanted my e-mail. I thought hmmmm. Went to lunch, got back, and here was the e-mail back from him.

Hello Mr. Sparks,

Thank you for the call earlier and for your follow-up to our release from last week. I’ve tried to honor your request of getting a spokesperson within the hour, but have been unable to do so. My apologies. I know an interview with sound bites is what you seek, but I can at least address your questions via this note.  

What are gestation stalls: Gestation stalls house individual sows during their pregnancy.  Our plan is focused on phasing out the use of gestation stalls for sows for the period of time between when they are confirmed pregnant to when they give birth. 

Why is McDonald’s concerned about this? We have consulted with animal welfare experts and with our Animal Welfare Council for more than 10 years on this, and they advise us there are better alternatives to gestation stalls.

Have a great day!