McDonald’s Restaurants is to carry out an internal social audit of its UK operations.
The UK fast food chain, which is technically a separate entity from other McDonald’s companies throughout the world, is not likely to make the audit public for some time.
However the results are expected to feed into a triple bottom line report in the future that will cover the company’s financial, environmental and social performance, according to Mike Love, vice president and head of McDonald’s Restaurants’s social responsibility policies.
He told EP: ‘We’ve completed an environmental audit, so the second stage will be to do an internal social audit. The third stage will be to move to the point where we can publish both as a full triple bottom line report for the company.’ However, he stressed that no timetable had been set.
As a private company, McDonald’s does not produce an annual report, but instead an annual corporate brochure giving financial highlights. ‘Our aim will be to develop that publication more on the lines of a triple bottom line report,’ said Love.
The company intends initially to use the social audit in a similar way to its environment audit, which is used to guide managers.
‘The environmental audit is being used as an internal tool to identify our strengths and weaknesses and to set internal targets to improve our performance’, said Love.
‘But the aim is to use it to produce an environmental management system, and we will be publishing environmental information in the future.’
Love said that social responsibility has become more important for McDonald’s in the UK in recent years. In 1999, McDonald’s gave £381,000 to children’s charities in the UK through its Ronald McDonald’s Children’s Charities scheme, which receives 0.04 per cent of sales each year from McDonald’s.
It has also attempted to address criticisms about its animal welfare policies, and now claims, for example, that almost 100 per cent of the eggs it uses are free range. ‘We decided in 1997 on a target of using 100 per cent free range eggs within three years and most of the time we are now 100 per cent,’ said Love.
‘But we prefer to say 90 per cent because the supply industry can’t always guarantee being able to meet our demands. Our hope is that we will have a sustainable supply soon.’