McDonald’s is committed to supporting Australian producers and manufacturers and our first preference is always to source produce from within Australia whenever it is viable and appropriate to do so. In recent years approximately 94 per cent of our food and packaging needs have been manufactured in Australia.
In an average year McDonald’s spends more than $600 million on Australian produce.
This includes purchasing an average of:
- More than 360 million hamburger buns
- More than 83 million English muffins
- Almost 68 million kilos of potatoes
- 26.2 million kilos of beef
- 660,000 kilos of sliced and diced apples
- 15.6 million kilos of chicken
- More than 72 million eggs
- More than 13 million kilos of fresh produce
- 36 million litres of milk, including shake and sundae mix
McDonald’s does not own any businesses that supply to us and we have long term relationships in place with many of our suppliers, for example, we have been working with Inghams for over 20 years and Quality Bakers for close to 40 years.
back to top
We know that our influence in the market place brings with it a responsibility to ask for more than quality and price. As well as our environmental guidelines for suppliers, we have guidelines and programs in place in relation to social responsibility and animal welfare.
- The foundation of our social responsibility supplier program is our global Code of Conduct for Suppliers which outlines McDonald’s minimum requirements in the areas of employment and workplace practices. The aim of this program is to protect the health, safety and human rights of workers and audits are regularly conducted in Australia to ensure suppliers are meeting our social responsibility expectations.
- Our animal welfare expectations currently meet or exceed all minimum standards in Australia. We also adhere to McDonald’s Animal Welfare Guiding Principles in relation to animal welfare which expresses our commitment to ensuring animals are ‘free from cruelty, abuse and neglect’. Our guidelines are based on technical standards and a comprehensive audit program which was developed using the knowledge of third party experts. To ensure supplier compliance, our beef, poultry and pork suppliers’ processing plants are regularly audited by independent third party auditors as well as by trained McDonald’s personnel.
back to top
McDonald’s Australia has an environment strategy in place that addresses all elements of our operations.
Specifically we work with all our suppliers to assist them to provide us with an uninterrupted, long term supply of quality food and packaging in a way that minimises our impact on the environment. We also encourage the protection of resources that our suppliers share with the communities in which they operate.
We use a scorecard to measure supplier environmental performance for water, energy, waste and air quality related to the manufacture of McDonald’s beef, poultry, pork, potato and bakery products. Our major consumer packaging suppliers also participate in this scorecard. Some of our suppliers have made significant improvements to their business operations and have been acknowledged for this in Australia and internationally.
For more information about McDonald’s sustainable supply chain practices please download our 2010 Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report.
back to top
