Our Commitment to Quality

At McDonald’s, we take great care to ensure that what we serve every day is safe, quality food. That means we use 100% real beef patties seasoned with just a pinch of salt and pepper. It means our Egg McMuffin® is made with a freshly cracked egg. And, our Filet-O-Fish® sandwich is made with 100% whitefish sourced from sustainably managed fisheries. It means our Chicken McNuggets® are made with white meat chicken. Simply put, it means real, quality ingredients and always evolving what matters to you.

Antibiotics Policies

We believe in the responsible use of antibiotics important to human medicine* to help preserve their effectiveness for human and animal health in the future. Our policies do not permit the routine use of medically important antibiotics for the purpose of growth promotion or the habitual use of antibiotics for disease prevention.

Our focus is on refining antibiotic selection and administration, reducing non-therapeutic antibiotic use and, when possible, replacing antibiotics with long-term solutions to proactively prevent disease and protect animal health and welfare. We remain committed to the treatment of sick animals aligned with herd veterinarian direction to ensure the safety of our supply chain. 

In August of 2016, we accomplished our goal to only source chickens in the U.S. not treated with antibiotics important to human medicine. Building on this progress, the use of Highest Priority Critically Important Antibiotics (HPCIAs) to human medicine has been eliminated from all chicken served in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea and the U.S., with China expected to comply before the end of 2027.

We didn’t stop there. In December 2018, McDonald’s announced a policy to reduce the overall use of antibiotics important to human health, in our beef supply chain. Our policy covers 10 in-scope beef sourcing markets around the world, including the U.S., representing more than 85% of our global beef supply.

For more information on our approach to individual protein supply chains, visit Advocating for Responsible Antibiotic Use in Beef,  Implementing a Global Chicken Antibiotics Policy, and Our Pork Antibiotics Use Policy.

*As defined by the World Health Organization.

A Global Commitment to More Sustainable Beef

Burgers are an integral part of our menu, but that’s just one of the reasons we’re on a journey to advance more sustainable beef production. We’re striving to improve environmental practices in how beef is produced, make a positive difference in the lives of farmers, and to drive improvements in animal health and welfare. By joining forces with our partners, our beef sustainability goal is to influence industry-wide changes on a global scale.

Pride in Preparation

Every day, our kitchens work to prepare your food just the way you like it. That’s why we introduced fresh beef in our Quarter Pound* burgers, cooked when you order, then served hot and deliciously juicy.** Our buns are freshly toasted hot and golden to perfectly complement your favorite burgers and sandwiches.

*Weight before cooking 4 oz. At participating McDonald's.
**Fresh Beef available at most restaurants in contiguous U.S. Not available in Alaska, Hawaii, and U.S. Territories.

Back to Basics

We’re on a food journey, and our menu shows it. We’ve evolved everything from how we cook our beef patties, to the ingredients we use in new and old favorites. We use real butter for our breakfast items and a freshly cracked egg in our Egg McMuffin®. In 2018, we announced that all of our seven classic burgers* have no artificial preservatives, no artificial flavors and no added colors from artificial sources. (Our pickle contains an artificial preservative, so skip it if you like.)

*McDonald’s seven classic burgers are the Hamburger, Cheeseburger, McDouble®, Quarter Pounder® with Cheese, Double Quarter Pounder® with Cheese and Big Mac®.

Commitment to Cage-Free Eggs

We’re proud of our commitment to only source cage-free eggs by 2025 in the U.S. and Canada, a commitment that has been said to have had a ripple effect throughout the industry. Today, McDonald’s USA is 60% of the way to our goal, and in 2020, we sourced more than 1.6 Billion cage-free eggs for our U.S. restaurants, some of which are used in our Egg McMuffin®.

Commitment to Sustainably Sourced Coffee

In 2022, 99.9% of our ground and whole bean coffee was sustainably sourced and supports a deforestation-free supply chain.  This is achieved in one of two ways: coffee is sourced as certified to international sustainability standards through organizations such as Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade International and Fair Trade USA, or coffee is sourced from farms participating in approved roaster-led programs that comply with the McCafé SIP program. These two approaches are complementary efforts and McDonald’s will continue to support both certification and direct engagement with farmers as methods to achieve positive impacts.

To meet our commitment to support a deforestation-free supply chain, coffee sourced in high-risk countries for deforestation must be Rainforest Alliance certified. Learn more about our commitment to responsibly source coffee and our McCafe SIP program.

Milk From Cows not Treated with rbST

The milk we use in our low-fat white Milk Jugs and reduced sugar* low-fat chocolate Milk Jugs comes from cows that are not treated with rbST, an artificial growth hormone.^

*25% less sugar than leading Quick Service Restaurants’ low-fat chocolate milk. 14g of sugar vs. avg. 22g at leading Quick Service Restaurants.
^No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbST-treated and non-rbST-treated cows.

A More Balanced Happy Meal®

The Happy Meal® has been enjoyed by families around the world for decades, bringing people together to share moments and create lasting memories. Just as every family around the world is different, our Happy Meal changes with them.

We recognize the important role we have in feeding millions of people every day, and in providing families with a variety of choices to meet their needs. Parents are looking for menu choices that they can feel good about feeding their kids, and that’s why we’re focused on evolving the Happy Meal (PDF, 1.9 MB) and making balanced meals more accessible to families across the globe.

Sustainability at Sea

We’re committed to protecting fish supplies and healthy oceans by making more sustainable fish sourcing the industry standard. Every Filet-O-Fish® sandwich served in the U.S. is made with Alaska pollock from the one of the largest Marine Stewardship Council-certified fisheries in the world. In fact, all of the whitefish we serve globally is sourced from sustainably managed wild-caught fisheries. Read our latest Purpose and Impact Report (PDF 10.6 MB) for our progress on sourcing from verified sustainable fisheries.

Committed to Menu Evolution

Change is good, especially when it means adding new tastes to our menu. 

Pork Sow Housing

As of the end of 2022, more than 91% of our pork purchased in the U.S. comes from suppliers that have phased out the use of gestation stalls for housing confirmed pregnant sows. This marks continued significant progress on our journey to maximize the time that pregnant sows spend in a group environment. Our commitment is guided by the industry- and American Association of Swine Veterinarians (AASV)-endorsed definition for group housing for pregnant sows. McDonald’s currently buys nearly 175 million pounds of pork associated with producers that house pregnant sows in groups.

Since announcing the commitment in 2012, McDonald’s and our supplier partners have worked diligently to meet this goal and remain dedicated to achieving it, engaging with industry-wide stakeholders to share our vision with an ongoing focus on driving progress at scale. In 2017, we reached a milestone to source pork for the U.S. business only from producers who share our commitment.

While McDonald’s targeted the end of 2022 for completion, industry-wide challenges for farmers and pork producers – such as the impacts from global outbreaks of African Swine Fever and the COVID-19 pandemic – delayed progress and interrupted business. By the end of 2022, our adjusted expectation was that 85–90% of our U.S. pork volumes would be sourced by suppliers from producers in conformity with our commitment, representing material progress against our original 10-year timeframe. We have since surpassed that expectation, reaching 91% as of the end of 2022.

Phasing out the use of gestation stalls for the purpose of housing pregnant sows in the U.S. is a goal that remains vital to McDonald’s business and builds on our decades-long commitment to animal health and welfare. We remain committed to this journey, and we are on track to achieve our U.S. target by the end of 2024.

Read our latest Purpose & Impact Report (PDF, 10.6 MB) for more on our goals and performance.

Broiler Bold Moves

McDonald’s takes an outcome-based, holistic approach to chicken sustainability – one that prioritizes animal health and welfare, while also balancing additional considerations such as environmental impacts.

In 2017, McDonald’s announced a global commitment to source chickens raised with improved welfare outcomes. To achieve this, we outlined eight Broiler Welfare Commitments in 13 of our key markets1, which are expected to be fully implemented by the end of 2024. The in-scope markets represented more than 58% of our global chicken supply as of the end of 2022.

Our eight commitments to broiler welfare include:

  1. Establishing and convening the McDonald’s Chicken Sustainability Advisory Council (CSAC).
  2. Measuring key farm-level welfare outcomes.
  3. Developing state-of-the-art welfare measurement technology.
  4. Providing enrichments to support natural behavior.
  5. Running commercial trials to study the effects of certain production parameters on welfare outcomes.
  6. Utilizing Controlled Atmospheric Stunning (CAS) in the U.S. and Canada.
  7. Implementing third-party, on-farm auditing.
  8. Completing an assessment to measure the feasibility of extending these commitments to additional global markets where McDonald’s operates. 

For additional detail and latest progress on each commitment, please read more in our latest Purpose & Impact Report (PDF, 10.6 MB).

Making Nutrition Information Accessible

It’s been a longstanding practice to provide you with relevant nutrition information so you can make informed food choices. We’re continuing to develop ways to provide this information to you such as our Nutrition Calculator and our app. We work to ensure that nutrition information for our menu items is available and accessible through all owned websites and mobile apps used for ordering.

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