McDonald's commits to cage-free eggs

Fast-food chain McDonald's ($MCD) garnered praise from animal-rights groups on September 9, when it announced its intentions to transition to cage-free eggs for its 16,000 restaurants in the U.S. and Canada over the next decade. The company already purchases about 13 million cage-free eggs in the U.S. per year, it said in the announcement, but that's a tiny fraction of the 2 billion eggs it buys annually. The decision to switch to cage-free was prompted by customers, who are increasingly concerned about the origin of their food, said McDonald's USA President Mike Andres in the release. Earlier this year, McDonald's said that by 2017, it will phase out chicken raised with antibiotics that are important in human medicine. Release