A pilot project with McDonald's that tested the principles and criteria of the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef is being deemed a success.
Jeffrey Fitzpatrick-Stilwell, McDonald's Canada's senior manager of sustainability, says the project results were released last week for McDonald's Sustainable Beef Pilot Project.
"We've now proved in Canada that you can track cattle right from birth, straight through to burger, and that's something that hadn't been done before, so we were really proud that we were able to use this pilot to prove that," he says. "So information sharing up and down the whole value chain is a real critical element that the industry is going to need... and we're here to help make sure we're supportive of that and we're going to continue supporting that."
The McDonald's project tracked the journey of nearly 9000 head of Canadian cattle, or the equivalent of 2.4 million beef patties, raised on or handled through verified sustainable operations. Fitzpatrick-Stilwell says producers volunteered to be a part of the program.
"We were just delighted with the response we had from the Canadian beef industry," he says. "We had close to 200 people volunteer to be part of it, so it was just an incredibly positive response for us."
Last year, McDonald's sourced 65 million pounds of beef from Canadian beef producers.
Source : Portageonline