The Wendy's Company

Wendy's has an antibiotics policy that is publicly available on their website.

The company has extended its scope to include beef, pork and chicken. However, it does not cover fish and seafood.

Although the company states that their policy covers all beef, pork and chicken served in their restaurants, it is unclear whether this means all relevant operating and sourcing markets are covered. In the case of chicken and beef, the company's commitments appear to relate to their main operating market, which is the U.S.

Wendy's has stated that their long-term goal is to "phase out the routine use of medically important antibiotics on the farms that our suppliers' source from". However, their current beef commitment only covers 15% of all sourced beef and targets the reduction of only one antibiotic by 20%.

Wendy's achieved it commitment to eliminate all antibiotics important to human medicine from its U.S. chicken production in 2017. For beef, it has committed to quantifying antibiotics use and to source 15% of its beef from a progressive group of producers that have each committed to a 20% reduction of the only medically important antibiotic routinely fed to their cattle. This began in 2018, but no details have been provided to indicate when this commitment is expected to be achieved by. For pork, the company states that all their pork suppliers are "Pork Quality Assurance Plus program certified, which requires judicious use of antibiotics under the care of a veterinarian". This does not translate into a clear time-bound target in line with its broader commitment to phase out the routine use of medically important antibiotics. Therefore, we have scored Wendy's based on their commitments for chicken and beef.

The company states that they are committed to quantifying antibiotics use within its beef supply chain, and work has begun. However, no further information was found and/ or disclosed.

Wendy's states that responsible antibiotics use is part of their established Animal Welfare Audits, which requires suppliers to be audited at least twice annually. This includes one internal and the other being a third party audits and covers only U.S. and Canadian suppliers. In their response to FAIRR, Wendy's stated that third-party audits via the USDA Process Verified Programs are required. This cover chicken only. For beef, the company states that live cattle are subject to the Beef Alliance-approved independent auditing bodies i.e. IMI Global and TCFA which includes antibiotics use. For pork, it is unclear whether third-party audits in addition to internal audits are carried out to verify supplier compliance on antibiotics use.

Wendy's responded to the investor letter providing insightful answers to all questions. The company has not met with the investor coalition. Their response is available here.