Do you want sustainability with that?
Next week the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment is kicking off its annual seminar series at the University of Manitoba with Jeffrey Fitzpatrick-Stilwell, senior manager of sustainability for McDonald’s Canada.
“This worked out perfectly, because we do like to bring in people from outside the faculty, people in business or industry that have a different perspective,” said Christine Rawluk, research development co-ordinator at the National Centre for Livestock and the Environment. “I think that it will be a really interesting discussion, I also think it will attract people beyond agriculture, people who are interested in food and people who are interested in how businesses respond to public demand or public interest.”
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McDonald’s has made headlines in recent weeks for both a pledge to phase out eggs laid by caged birds over the next 10 years and a series of ads highlighting the contributions of Canadian farmers.
The month-long ad campaign features iconic McDonald’s items like the Big Mac and Egg McMuffin minus the components produced by Canadian farmers to illustrate the importance of Canadian producers. A company representative said McDonald’s purchases about a billion dollars’ worth of ingredients from Canadian farmers each year.
The food supplier is not without its detractors, however.
The Congregation of Benedictine Sisters of Boerne, Texas — a McDonald’s Corp. shareholder group — has repeatedly called for the chain to stop purchasing meat raised using antibiotics necessary for human medicine.
The company has said it would phase out such meats over the next two years.
Rawluk said that Fitzpatrick-Stilwell has been working on the ground level in Manitoba with farmers and Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, looking at a wide variety of production practices.
“So they’re taking a kind of different approach than what I’ve seen in some industries,” she said. “They are working directly with the farmers to develop this, so it’s quite exciting.”
The seminar will be held on Monday, September 28, at the University of Manitoba’s James Richardson Auditorium. Refreshments will be served at 3:30 p.m. and Jeffrey Fitzpatrick-Stilwell will begin speaking at 4 p.m.