At the company’s annual shareholder meeting, shareholders voted on a resolution requiring the corporation to publicly assess its impacts on public health. The resolution received a 6.4 per cent vote.
The resolution would compel McDonald’s Board of Directors to assess how the growing body of evidence linking fast food and its marketing with diet-related conditions will impact McDonald’s finances and operations.
The proposal requested that McDonald’s board issue a report within six months of the 2012 annual meeting, “assessing the company’s policy responses to growing evidence of linkages between fast food and childhood obesity, diet-related diseases and other impacts on children’s health.”
The resolution was advanced by a coalition of institutional investors, including Corporate Accountability International, a corporate watchdog and consumer advocacy group.
According to Corporate Accountability International, this was the first resolution introduced calling on a major corporation to address its impact on public health, or “health footprint,” as well as the liabilities for shareholders’ of such impacts.
