Animal Health & Welfare

We know that our ability to serve safe, high-quality food depends on a foundation of responsible care for the health and welfare of the animals in our supply chain.

While we are not directly involved in the raising, feeding, handling, transportation or processing of animals; as a major global purchaser of animal proteins and animal products, we have an opportunity to leverage our influence to promote strong practises of care for those animals. To achieve this, we are partnering with suppliers and producers across our supply chain to drive toward continuous improvement of animal welfare outcomes throughout their lives.

We focus our animal welfare efforts on key animal proteins and products including broiler poultry, laying hens (for egg production), beef cattle and dairy cows, and pigs.

Our work is guided by the Five Freedoms of animal welfare, a globally recognized set of standards on animal welfare established by the U.K. Farm Animal Welfare Council:

  • Freedom from Hunger and Thirst
  • Freedom from Discomfort
  • Freedom from Pain, Injury or Disease
  • Freedom to Express Normal Behaviour
  • Freedom from Fear and Distress

The Five Freedoms reference: Brambell FWR. (1965). Report of the Technical Committee of Enquiry into the Welfare of Livestock Kept under Intensive Conditions; HMSO: London, U.K.

As we continue to advance our work, we are aiming to build on the Five Freedoms to achieve an approach that encompasses the mental state of animals, known as the Five Domains. This approach defines both positive and negative experiences for animals and serves as a guide to increasingly prioritize positive experiences as a fundamental aspect of care for the animals in our supply chain.

The Five Domains

The Five Domains model reference: Mellor DJ and Reid CSW. (1994). Concepts of animal well-being and predicting the impact of procedures on experimental animals. In: Baker R, Jenkin G and Mellor DJ (eds) Improving the Well-being of Animals in the Research Environment, pp 3-18. Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research and Teaching: Glen Osmond, SA, Australia.

Our Strategy

We recognize the need for continuous improvement with respect to animal welfare and are committed to the ongoing evaluation and, where feasible, adoption of best practices within the industry, our supply chain and others.

Our strategy starts with building a foundational understanding of current industry practices and opportunities, understanding how these differ around the world, and combining this understanding with a realistic assessment of how these factors can be expected to evolve over time.

The approach we take considers the principles of being expert-informed, outcomes-focused, evidence-based, collaborative, holistic and accountable.

  • Informed by Experts: We regularly consult a range of recognized subject matter experts from industry and academia to access guidance on our policies, implementation strategies, and to challenge the way we think. Drawing on their expertise, we have established global welfare policies for key proteins as well as policies on the responsible use of antibiotics.
  • Outcome-Focused: While our standards for animal welfare are global, they incorporate the geographic variations in the way animals are raised within a global supply chain. In this regard, we have learned that a focus on a desired outcome is the preferred approach, allowing the local producer to achieve that outcome based on their management system.
  • Measurable: In 2021, a global cross-functional team helped to define globally aligned farm-and processing-level key welfare indicators (KWIs) for chicken, to help us assess welfare outcomes. The KWIs are objective measurements aligned with recognized national and international standards such as the World for Animal Health and the National Chicken Council. .
  • Informed by Research: We have partnered with suppliers and academics to test a variety of innovations across the supply chain and measure their respective impact on behaviour and welfare outcomes. We are working to identify and validate opportunities for future investment that are based on solid data and evidence.
  • Collaborative: We know that we can’t go it alone. We believe that animal health and welfare is a pre-competitive opportunity and we are increasingly investing in cross-sector collaboration to support progress across the entire industry. We are members of the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Poultry and Eggs as well as the International Poultry Welfare Alliance in order to engage with the industry at large as it redefines its guidelines for enhanced broiler welfare. We are also members of the GRSB and USRSB, and we are aligned with their newly published beef welfare goal.
  • Holistic: We consider the various environmental impacts of any animal welfare approach, including impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and land use, as well as commercial viability.
  • Accountable: Burger King, Popeyes, Tim Hortons, and Firehouse Subs beef and poultry core product suppliers, worldwide, can only use approved raw materials from suppliers which have submitted annual third-party audits that include animal welfare standards. Standards for animal welfare in the U.S. and Canada include those from the American Meat Institute and National Chicken Council. Suppliers are audited for their compliance to these standards, and RBI may terminate its business relationship with any vendor that violates these requirements, until they successfully implement a corrective action plan. Suppliers of products subject to specific responsible sourcing commitments must provide and maintain on record, an annual letter of guarantee to support their compliance with applicable commitments.

Our Goals

Cage-Free Eggs

Our goal: Transition to cage-free eggs globally by 2030 or earlier.

  • This includes 100% of whole eggs, liquid eggs, egg products and egg ingredients where egg makes up greater than 1% of an approved product’s formulation.

Our progress:

  • In North America, across RBI, compliance accelerated to a total of 11% of egg volumes. By the end of 2024, we achieved 7% compliance in Canada and 17% in compliance in the U.S.
  • In Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K., we source 100% of whole eggs used at Burger King restaurants from laying hens reared in cage-free systems.
  • Additional details can be found in the annual RB4G Report.

Our planned glidepath to achieve this goal across RBI:

  • In Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, we aim to transition to cage-free eggs by 2025.
  • In the U.S., our cage-free eggs target is to reach at least 40% achievement by the end of 2025, and then full compliance by 2026.1
  • In Canada, for cage-free eggs our aim is 30% achievement by the end of 2025, 50% by 2026, 70% by 2027, and then full compliance by 2028.
  • Elsewhere globally, we are committed to using 100% cage-free eggs by 2030 or earlier.

1Products sourced for Tim Hortons U.S. from Canada that contain egg as an ingredient will follow the transition plan for Tim Hortons in Canada.

In some regions, cage-free supply is currently limited and there is not yet a clear path for the availability of sourcing. Regardless, we are committed to working with our stakeholders to meet this goal and will both disclose our progress and update our policy as we move forward so that we may remain transparent regarding both the challenges we face and progress we are able to make.

Due to the higher exposure of cage-free birds to Avian influenza, during seasons of high pathogenicity, we will respond as necessary to ensure continuity of supply and safety of our guests.

We rely on farmers and vendors around the world that serve the 100+ countries we operate in to be able to directly and indirectly supply the large volume of eggs that we require and to do so affordably. In countries where no supply exists today, we believe that creating global demand will encourage suppliers to make changes to meet our policy requirements. 

Sow Housing

Our goal: Eliminate the use of gestation crates for housing pregnant sows in our supply chain globally by 2035 or sooner.

Our progress:

  • As of March 2025, we have achieved global compliance on this commitment for 80% of our pork supply, up from 35% compliance in 2023.
  • In North America, we saw the most significant progress. As of March 2025, Burger King and Tim Hortons in the United States and Canada have achieved compliance on 99% of their collective pork requirements.

We’re working in conjunction with our vendors to drive continuous improvement in the housing of sows and piglets.

We recognize that farrowing systems need to achieve a balance between sow and piglet welfare, and it's our vision that the farrowing systems in our supply chain be appropriate to the sow’s size, permit increased movement and the expression of natural behaviours and do not increase piglet mortality. 

Achieving these targets requires our vendors and farmers around the world to supply the large volume of compliant pork that we require at commercially viable prices. We believe that by creating this global demand, we will encourage vendors and the industry to make the necessary changes to meet our requirements, especially in countries where the use of gestation crates is still the standard farming practice. 

Broiler Chickens

RBI is committed to improving the welfare of chickens within our supply chain. In 2023, we updated our broiler chicken welfare policy to include key welfare indicators (KWls) developed in collaboration with the International Poultry Welfare Alliance (IPWA), FAI Farms and our supplier advisory council. Our KWIs are largely outcomes-based to ensure suppliers prioritize taking steps that demonstrate material improvements to chicken health and well-being. We will continue to monitor the latest scientific research on welfare practices to ensure we encourage implementation of those that demonstrate the best outcomes for chickens.

Our KWIs address the following welfare principles:

  • Animal Health & Welfare
  • Housing
  • Euthanasia
  • Equipment Use
  • Feed & Water
  • Handling & Transport
  • Environment

By the end of 2024, we onboarded the majority of our major U.S. suppliers, responsible for our U.S. chicken supply for Burger King and Popeyes restaurants into our KWI data collection program. In Europe, we are on track to onboard the majority of our key suppliers in 2025. We will actively monitor the KWI data we collect and plan to develop a roadmap with major suppliers around the most impactful and deliverable aspects of chicken welfare, starting with housing and enrichments. For other Better Chicken Commitment (BCC) objectives – including breed type, stocking density and processing – where more widespread industry support is required to help mitigate the challenges linked to availability and cost, we will continue to use our influence as a major poultry buyer to encourage positive changes in the industry.

Antibiotics

In many parts of the world, the raising of animals for human consumption relies on the use of antibiotics. This and other modern animal husbandry practices in some cases can drive antibiotic use in the livestock industry. In addition, the WHO states that the “overuse and misuse of antibiotics in animals and humans is contributing to the raising threat of antibiotic resistance”. Antimicrobial resistance is particularly concerning when it impacts antibiotics that are in the classes that are important to human medicine. 

As a global buyer of animal proteins and animal products, we acknowledge that we have an important role to play in preserving the effectiveness of antibiotics. Our aim is to support the use of animal husbandry practices that reduce and, where possible, eliminate the need for antibiotic therapies in animals. Leading practices minimize the occurrence of diseases, prioritize prevention, hygiene, and vaccination, and by using our global reach we aim to help identify and scale effective solutions that progressive farms already employ. 

When preventive and alternative measures are no longer sufficient to maintain animal health, antibiotic use must not be withheld if it will jeopardize an animal’s well-being. 

RBI supports principles of judicious use, which require providing the right type and dose, at the right time, to the right animals, when necessary, to treat the correctly identified pathogen or disease, administered under the supervision of an attending veterinarian. Employment of the judicious use doctrine does not permit the routine use of antibiotics important to human medicine for growth promotion and disease prevention. In the presence of a known pathogen, we support judicious use of antimicrobials to prevent illness and secure flock/group health and well-being. Antibiotics specific to animals that are not important to human medicine should be considered for application first whenever feasible. When antibiotics are used, our approved protein suppliers are required by applicable law to adhere to legislated antibiotic withdrawal times. These practices ensure that all antibiotics have cleared each animal’s system before it enters the food supply. 

We have worked closely with our suppliers and subject matter experts to study the use of antibiotics in protein supply chains globally, and it was clear that each protein industry is at a different stage of maturity related to reducing the use of antibiotics, and practices can differ significantly between geographies. 

Of our key proteins, the poultry supply chain is the most vertically integrated, and, where this is the case, it is more feasible today to maintain traceability from the barn to the final product. This structure has been an important supporting factor in the ability of the industry to drive reductions in antibiotics use over time, particularly in our home markets in North America. Today, 100%2 of the chicken used in approved products for Burger King, Popeyes and Tim Hortons in the U.S. is raised without the use of antibiotics important to human medicine, as defined by the World Health Organization.3

In Canada, the chicken used in approved products for Tim Hortons adheres to the Chicken Farmers of Canada’s On-Farm Food Safety Program, which prohibits the preventative use of antibiotics of high importance and very high importance to human medicine, as defined by Health Canada.4  Due to supply constraints and increasing demand in Canada, we will reassess meeting the NAIHM5 standard for Tim Hortons Canada’s chicken for future supply. Additionally, through our KWI program, we are partnering with broiler chicken suppliers to improve the tracking of antibiotic usage and explore ways to reduce the need for medically important antibiotics via improved welfare practices. 

In contrast to poultry, the majority of the global beef supply chains are not vertically integrated from farm to processing and packing. Systems to trace and maintain records of antibiotics use through the full supply chain, when the meat in a standard beef product (like a burger patty, for example) originates from various animals bred at various locations, are not readily available today. Because of the limited data available across the global beef industry, measuring the current use of antibiotics and monitoring for reductions in usage poses a significant challenge, for which we are seeking solutions. 

As part of our antibiotic stewardship program, we will work with our global suppliers and franchisees to encourage the following pertaining to the use of antibiotics in the beef supply chain: 

  • Reduction in the use of antibiotics designated as Highest Priority Critically Important3 where possible, without negatively impacting animal welfare 
  • Reduction in the routine preventive use of antibiotics 
  • Reduction in the use of antibiotics to promote growth 

We face similar challenges of traceability within the pork supply chain globally as well, and aim to define our vision through the future development of an antibiotics policy specific to this protein. 

We have developed policies informed by a wide variety of expert stakeholders, that detail our species-specific commitments and expectations, as well as our approach to accountability and transparency. 

2 Excludes eggs and chicken by-products.
3 As defined by the World Health Organization in Critically Important Antimicrobials for Human Medicine, 6th Revision 2018.
4 As defined by Health Canada Categorization of Antimicrobial Drugs Based on Importance in Human Medicine, 2009.
5 NAIHM: No antibiotics important to human medicine, as defined by the World Health Organization in Critically Important Antimicrobials for Human Medicine, 6th Revision 2018.

Partnerships