Hi.
I've got limited internet time (library) and am trying to get up-to-date info on some facts about chicken welfare and egg resourcing by McDonalds today. Can anyone help with some good links please?
I've found out about McD's supposed efforts to go cage-free in 2011 but keep coming across the massively sponsored 'Make your own mind up' site of Mc'Donalds! There's a sickening video of a kid being shown around a happy-happy free-range unit. You can tell by the lack of any scratched areas that the birds have just been placed there that day!

Things I want to know are:
Is beak clipping still going on and if so, in the UK?
Is the cage-free idea just a stunt while importing the majority of birds/eggs from other countries?
Where is the majority of bird-rearing going on (which country).
How many birds are killed a year by McDonalds as a whole company. Or is that just too many to count?!

Many thanks for any help. You gotta go into battle equipped with real facts!

In terms of chicken welfare here is some info about how they are still using old fashioned slaughter methods rather than transferring to CAK in the states, etc.

 http://www.mccruelty.com/

Cage free policy only applies in the UK not USA and the whole company should be consistent.

Needless to say free-range hens do not always have access to the out doors because the potholes in the huge sheds they are kept in are guarded territorially by the stronger hens. Laying hens are killed when their 'production levels' drop. Baby chicks bred for egg production are killed if they are male, as they obviously don't produce periods (eggs) and are not the same breed used for meat production. Slaughter takes the form of gassing or killing by a hi-speed grinder.

From:
 http://www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/chickens/broiler.htm

Feather pecking and debeaking

Hens subjected to the stresses of modern farming conditions tend to peck at one another.
‘Aggressive pecking’ is directed at the head of another bird and ‘feather pecking’ is directed at
the plumage. Hens will often rip out the feathers of other hens, or even peck them to death and
engage in cannibalism. In one study of hens kept in enriched cages, more than one out of every
30 hens was killed and eaten by the other birds. Remarkably, this level of cannibalism was
declared to be ‘relatively low and within the production standard’ (Weitzenburger, 2005). The
same researchers found that although feather pecking is thought to be a redirection of hens’
natural instinct to peck at the ground, providing them with a dust bath and straw chaff for
foraging did not always help.

When hens injure and kill one another in this way, it hurts the farmer’s bottom line. Dead hens
obviously lay no eggs, and hens that have lost a lot of their feathers need to eat more in order to
keep warm (Bestman, 2003), so it’s in the interests of the egg industry to minimise these
injuries. The most common solution is to cut off part of each hen’s beak, a process which is
performed without anaesthesia. Those in the egg industry refer to this process as ‘beak
trimming’, which makes it sound like a manicure or a haircut – but unlike human nails and hair,
the part of the beak that is cut is very sensitive to pain as it is highly innervated (Davis, 2004).
Hens whose beaks have been trimmed have difficulty eating properly later in life (Davis, 2004).

Beak trimming is currently prohibited in organic egg production, and will be prohibited in all
EU egg production from January 2011 (DEFRA, 2002), but this development is not without its
drawbacks. Beak trimming has been prohibited in Sweden since 1999, and an investigation into
Swedish egg farms in 2002 found “a large number of birds” with “denuded parts of the body”
due to feather pecking (Oden, 2002).

The egg industry is working on other methods of lessening the impact of pecking and
cannibalism, either by addressing the causes of the behaviour or by breeding hens that are less
aggressive by nature. But it’s not likely that these injuries will be eliminated entirely, since that
would be prohibitively expensive. Sanctuaries which offer hens a genuinely free-range life in
small flocks find that birds do not feather pick and have healthy, shining feathers.

cheers! - answers some of my questions. Bird deaths/consumption still seems difficult to track down. x

McDonalds itself claims:

"It's difficult to give an absolutely precise number, but to give a rough estimate, McDonald's UK use approximately ..... 280,000 chickens per week or 14.6 million per year."

 http://www.makeupyourownmind.co.uk/question-search?key=number+of+chickens#question2