Commentary: Too little, too late

May Day, and the big news is the Burger King Corp. announcement that the fast-food chain would switch to sourcing cage-free eggs and pork. The less-considered aspect of the resulting media coverage is that none of this needs to have played out the way it did.

The fast-food chain said it would phase out battery cages for laying hens and gestation crates for sows by 2017, making its pledge among the more comprehensive among a number of similar marketing tactics announced by McDonald’s and Wendy’s.

For example: McDonald’s Corp. stated back in February that the company would begin to require suppliers to begin phasing out gestation stalls, although the timeline was not set in stone.

Wendy’s gives preference to suppliers who have adopted plans to phase out gestation stalls and last year began requiring them to submit schedules for phasing them out—again, though, with no hard deadlines in place.

Reaction to the BK announcement represents something of a litmus test on animal welfare. Animal rights activists, such as the Humane Society of the United States, and their sympathizers within the NGO community rejoiced over what they painted as a victory. Industry organizations, such as the National Pork Producers Council, complained that Burger King—and presumably other foodservice chains that have taken similar steps—were “bullied into companying” with the activist agenda.

Truth is, Burger King’s decision to buy pork from suppliers who plan to phase out gestation crates wasn’t nearly the bold move major media made it out to be, seeing as how key pork industry players such as Cargill, Hormel and Smithfield Farms have already started phase-outs of the stalls.

Worse, the Humane Society of the United States was able to hog the spotlight. In a most distasteful aspect of the news coverage surrounding BK’s announcement, HSUS president Wayne Pacelle took credit for the development, even as his self-serving statement properly put credit where it actually belongs: with consumer demand.

“There was once a time when action on social concerns like animal welfare and sustainability in the food industry was rare,” Pacelle told The Huffington Post. “Now, emerging public consciousness about animals, combined with productive collaboration between The HSUS and corporate leaders like Burger King, is beginning to change that dynamic. Animal welfare is becoming an important element in corporate social responsibility.”

Sensitive subjects

Indeed it has. And here’s the bottom line to the recent movement among foodservice operators and grocery retailers to advance certain elements of the activist agenda: The industry should have seen this coming years ago.

For starters, supermarkets and fast-food chains are both particularly sensitive to public pressure on controversial issues—everything from StarLink to rBGH to pink slime causes them to turn somersaults backing away from policies and products they formerly embraced as well-regarded contributors to the bottom line.

That shouldn’t come as a news flash to anyone in the business.

Meanwhile, the use of both cages and gestations stalls have been squarely in the activist crosshairs for at least a decade now. Several state referenda banning gestation stalls have passed by wide margins, while even a rookie marketing analyst could have told anyone who cared to listen that gestation stalls were a “soft” target that could be portrayed in a harsh, negative light to a clueless public that knows nothing about livestock production.

Yet, even though there has been movement lately among industry leaders to promote a planned phase-out of gestation stalls, it comes across as too little, too late. Even though industry is moving toward implementing the very objectives animal activists have been demanding, the agitators get to take the credit and reap the “rewards” of this so-called victory for animal welfare.

In the end, whether that endpoint comes five, eight or ten years from now, gestation stalls will be gone and battery cages will be a relic of the past. Not because they’re terrible inventions that should never have been put in place, but because we live in a society where consumer demand rules the marketplace. That puts the industry’s customers in the driver’s seat, and the bigger they are, the greater their leverage.

As always, when it comes to certain aspects of the animal rights agenda, there are two ways to go: Fight to the bitter end and then watch your opponents crow about their eventual triumph.

Or, anticipate where you can checkmate those same opponents and make the moves needed to marginalize their positioning.

Not the other way around.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Dan Murphy, a veteran food-industry journalist and commentator.

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