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Billionaire Icahn blasts McDonald's on animal welfare
Asserting that McDonald's had not lived up to prior commitments on animal welfare, billionaire investor Carl Icahn said he planned to offer alternative candidates for the company's board of directors.
Icahn decried the treatment of pigs produced for McDonald's meat, which are put in a tiny "crate for its whole life" where "it can't move around," he said in an interview broadcast Wednesday on Bloomberg.
"I really do feel emotional about these animals and the unnecessary suffering," Icahn added.
A longtime fighter of often-successful shareholder battles, Icahn said he had worked with the Humane Society a decade ago on the issue, winning an agreement from McDonald's that it would not buy from suppliers employing these cages in 10 years.
McDonald's "did a little something but never delivered," Icahn said, adding that he was "teed off" when he learned the company had not followed through.
"We are probably 90 percent there on putting up a slate" of board candidates, Icahn said. "We're not going to fool around with them any more."
McDonald's did not respond to a request for comment from AFP.
The chain's website says that more than 60 percent of its US pork supply has "phased out the use of gestation stalls for pregnant sows."
T. Jones--BTZ
