McDonald's Touting Locavore Cred?

by Jan Ellen Spiegel, Posted Jul 30th 2010 @ 2:00PM

Photo: Corbis

It's the core of a summer promotion called "From Here" running in western Washington state: McDonald's is using TV and print ads, billboards and a website to hype the local potatoes, apples, fish and milk it uses.

True? Yeah.

A wee bit disingenuous? Yeah. Since McDonald's was 1) Already using all this stuff anyway, and 2) The region in question happens to be the largest national supplier of most of these products.

A McDonald's spokeswoman said "From Here" grew out of focus groups last spring with customers in western Washington, who said they wanted to know more about where their food came from. (Did they really need a focus group to know "local" is hot?)

So McDonald's is pushing these facts about what it serves in its 191 western Washington restaurants:

95% of the French fries and hash browns are from Washington-grown potatoes
88% of the apples are Washington-grown
99% of the glasses of milk served are from the Northwest
95% of the fish is from Northwestern and Alaskan waters

Raise your hand if you're shocked.

For potatoes -- Washington is the second largest potato producing state in the nation (number one is -- duh -- Idaho, Washington's neighbor) according to data supplied by the National Agricultural Statistics Service of the USDA. Nationally 18 percent of McDonald's French fries and hash browns came from Washington state potatoes in 2009.

For apples, it would be a lot harder to find ones that aren't from Washington. The state produces more than half the apples in the country and McDonald's bought more than 13 million pounds of them in 2009 for use nationally.

McDonald's bought some 43 million pounds of Pacific Northwest fish in 2009. That's another non-surprise since Alaskan fishermen in 2008 (the last year available) were responsible for more than 60% of the finfish caught in the U.S. according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

And just about all the milk McDonald's uses is from Darigold, a Northwest cooperative of more than 500 dairies.

McDonald's admits it hasn't changed its purchasing practices at all -- but you can't fault them for jumping on that local food gravy train. And hey, somebody had to grow this stuff.

Filed Under: Fast Food
Tags: from here, local food, mcdonalds

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

7-30-2010 @5:41PM Michael Schmitt said... Just to clarify:

99% of all the milk in the PACIFIC NORTHWEST comes from Darigold and its Farmer-Owners. The cooperative is able to produce and distribute the milk locally, but it does not provide milk to the national McDonald's system.

The second-to-last paragraph can be interpreted that Darigold provides to the entire nationwide system.
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