What Kind Of Steak Does Mcdonald's Use

By all accounts, McDonald'due south is the most-popular burger business in the state. And the chain'southward flagship Big Mac sits cozily atop the lists of the acknowledged, almost popular burgers on a carte du jour in the U.Due south., according to the Big Mac Museum.

The chain sells nearly 6.5 million burgers per solar day and well-nigh four,500 every minute—which is a whole lot of meat to source. So how does it get from the farm to the bulldoze-thru? Read on to find out.

Related: 8 Worst Fast-Food Burgers to Stay Away From Correct Now

Where's McDonald's meat from?

mcdonalds hamburger — McDonald'southward/Yelp

Information supplied past McDonald'south USA says that the company "partners with a global network of suppliers and farmers to provide quality ingredients and packaging materials." The website goes even further and names Oklahoma City-based Lopez Foods as a primal supplier of beefiness, pork, and chicken to the chain since 1968.

In improver, McDonald's points to Philadelphia-based Keystone Foods as a major meat supplier providing the chain with more 150 million pounds of beefiness, 300 million pounds of chicken, and 15 one thousand thousand pounds of fish each year.

Keystone is also credited with developing the individual quick-freezing process that allows its famous burgers to be frozen in a manner that retains both taste and texture. McDonald'southward also says it partnered with Keystone in developing its wildly popular Chicken McNuggets.

Asked generally almost the quality of its meat, McDonald'southward USA says "Our burgers are made only with 100% USDA inspected beef. There are no preservatives or fillers in our patties and the just thing e'er added is a touch of table salt and pepper on the grill. And our Quarter Pounder burgers are made from 100% fresh beefiness patties in the Usa."

The process by which McDonald'due south burgers are fabricated isn't a well-guarded secret. In fact, a Business organisation Insider report from one of McDonald'south largest meat processing facilities in Germany said that shipments of beefiness are checked for purity earlier being basis up in a large meat grinder. The patties are and then machine shaped. Once fabricated, the burgers are and so individually quick-frozen and packed into plastic numberless and boxes before beingness shipped off to restaurants in the U.South. and beyond.

Some have concerns about this meat and the treatment of animals.

However, the burger giant has recently come up under burn for its animate being welfare policies by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who has championed like fauna welfare causes in the past.

CNN reported just days ago that Icahn sent a scorching letter to investors maxim that McDonald'south is "failing" investors and misleading the public about the company's animal welfare policies related to how its pork supply is sourced.

Specifically at issue is the use of "gestation" crates which are very small stalls where pregnant sows are held and their movements highly restricted in the company'south pork supply chain.

McDonald's had promised in Feb of this year to completely phase out the use of the crates by 2024, according to CNN.

But Icahn said that the company's merits that most of its U.Due south. pork doesn't come from sows housed in gestation crates was a "contemptuous fabrication."

In response, McDonald's told CNN, "While the company looks forward to promoting further collaboration across the industry on this upshot, the current pork supply in the US would make this blazon of commitment impossible," adding that Icahn's demands to eliminate the use of crates would significantly increment costs, "placing a burden on all aspects of our business organization, our supply chain and McDonald's customers."

Further, the company said that its inability to meet previously stated animal welfare targets was a result of challenges from the pandemic as well as a "devasting swine fever." Icahn called these "poor excuses."

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At that place are as well antibiotics concerns.

When it comes to the use of antibiotics in its meat supply, McDonald'southward says it'southward trying to limit the apply. Nearly fast-food bondage try to avoid or reduce the use of meat raised with antibiotics since they've been recognized as contributing to the development of antibiotic-resistant viruses.

The company's website states that "In August of 2016, nosotros accomplished our goal to only source chickens in the U.S. non treated with antibiotics important to human medicine." The company adds it is making progress with beef likewise—"In December 2018, McDonald's appear a policy to reduce the overall apply of antibiotics important to homo health, in our beef supply chain. Our policy covers for our top x beefiness sourcing markets around the world, including the U.S., representing more 85% of our global beefiness supply."

Unfortunately for the Golden Arches, consumer groups are a bit more than disquisitional when it comes to efforts to reduce the use of antibiotics in the chain'due south meat supply. The most recent Concatenation Reaction report, a coalition of consumer groups including Consumer Reports and The Heart for Food Safety that annually review and grade fast-food restaurant chains on policies regarding antibiotic utilise in meats, gave McDonald's—along with Wendy's and Subway–a depression class regarding antibody use in their beef supplies.

The written report noted that "Subway and McDonald'due south earned 'C' grades for adopting responsible antibiotic utilize policies merely neither has begun implementing them." In addition, McDonald'southward was singled out for "…. failing to honor its delivery to fix antibiotic reduction targets in its beef supply by the cease of 2020."

McDonald's rivals Burger King and Arby's both were given "F" grades, "for taking no public action to reduce antibiotic overuse in their beef supplies." Top performers, according to the report, were Chipotle and Panera. Both companies were given "A" grades for the sixth sequent year.

Despite all of this, there are some McDonald's items that take really gotten healthier in the last decade. Read all about them here.

Alan Krawitz

Alan Krawitz is a veteran New York-based journalist with 25 years of feel working for a variety of media outlets including Newsday, Zenger News, and Long Island Press. Read more