March 1, 2021 - After the successful launch of the Atlas Challenge ranking on the Food Delivery services and the food producers in 2020, global animal welfare organization FOUR PAWS continues to benchmark businesses in the food industry on their strategies of meat reduction. 

With its recent publication, the “One Welfare driven” campaigners published its latest ranking on fast-food chains within the quick-service sector at www.four-paws.org/fast-food-chains. The overall results of the big players were sobering: The likes of McDonald's, Burger King, Domino’s Pizza, and Subway- amongst others- show strong development potential with areas of improvement needed. dean&david not only scored the highest but are the first to jump on board committing to sustainable business practices, which promote meat and fish reduction and an increase of plant-based food. This not only contributes to a reduction of animals being exploited in many current agricultural systems, but also helps decrease the negative impact on climate change. 

The FOUR PAWS Atlas challenge ranking targeted a total of 43 fast-food chains in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the United Kingdom and evaluated the publicly available CSR reports, product portfolio, marketing and promotional tactics towards plant-based food and meat and fish offerings, as well as their future progress and commitment. The majority of the assessed fast-food chains ended up in the ‘Average’ category, and only 5 received a rating of ‘good’; KFC (UK), LEON (UK), Pret A Manger (UK), Pizza Hut (UK) and dean&david (DACH region). 8 fell into the ‘low’ category; Domino’s Pizza (Austria), Call a pizza (Germany), Burgerista (Austria), Pizza Mann (Austria), Türkis (Austria), Telepizza (Switzerland), Sam’s Pizza Land (Switzerland) and Wienerwald (Austria).

The FOUR PAWS Atlas Challenge

As part of the FOUR PAWS Atlas Challenge, the food industry is urged to commit to reducing their offering of meat and fish products and increasing their plant-based portfolio as part of the animal welfare and environmental protection in their CSR strategies. This is intended to reduce the excessive production and consumption of animal-based foods and to stand up against the industrial farming of animals. FOUR PAWS acknowledges that animal welfare, human health and environmental protection are deeply connected (One Welfare concept).