Unhappy Meals at McDonalds

Activist-investor Carl Icahn has apparently failed in his attempt to make McDonald’s a slightly more humane company. The plan was to hold the fast-food giant to its decade-long pledge to stop ordering pork from suppliers that crammed pregnant pigs inside tiny crates, among other changes.

But shareholders rejected the idea this week, by voting down Icahn’s hand-picked nominees from McDonald’s board. Icahn had purchased $50,000 of McDonald’s stock – a small amount, but enough to initiate a potential reshuffle of the 12-member board.

The billionaire has said he was inspired to push for a (marginally) more humane McDonald's by his daughter, an animal lover who has worked for the Humane Society.

But the company wasn’t having it. “Mr Icahn is using a narrow issue,” the firm wrote in a letter to shareholders earlier this month, “and one that we have demonstrated industry-leading progress on – McDonald's 2012 pork commitment – as a reason to change the way McDonald's sources pork in the US and reduce the number of meat-based items on our menu,”

Icahn’s modest gesture of humanity would put “an untenable financial burden on our customers.”

Shareholders at other bigtime pork vendors – Papa John’s, Wendy’s, Dine Brands – have also rejected similar initiatives. Clearly, meaningful change won’t come from investors, large or small. 

Consumers will have to show the corporations that it’s not in their financial interest to insist on torturing pigs for profit. Perhaps that will require some changes in diet.

Photo credit: Andrew Skowron via The Humane League