McDonald’s Action Causes a Big McFlap

McDonald’s misled the public when it said it was revealing the ingredients of its fast food due to “increasing customer interest” and failed to acknowledge pressure from attorneys general in three states, authorities said Wednesday.

McDonald’s, seller of more than 50 billion hamburgers, announced Monday that it was distributing the information to its restaurants and franchises nationwide.

On Wednesday, however, spokesmen for the attorneys general offices in California, New York and Texas said McDonald’s agreed to provide the information only after pressure from them.

They also said McDonald’s jumped the gun by announcing the move before a joint statement agreed to by itself and four other fast-food operations.

Texas Atty. Gen. Jim Mattox said through an assistant that the McDonald’s announcement represented “a calculated effort to make the public think they were doing this out of the goodness of their heart, when in fact they were doing it because of pressure from our office.”

“It’s our position they did it in hopes of misleading the public,” said Steve Gardner, an assistant attorney general in Mattox’s office.

McDonald’s officials said they were standing by Monday’s announcement.

“The primary reason we’re doing this is because of increasing customer interest,” said Charles Rubner, an assistant vice president at McDonald’s suburban Oak Brook, Ill., headquarters. “I will acknowledge that certainly the discussions we’ve had with the attorneys general was good input to us that signaled to us there was more widespread interest in the issue beyond the East Coast,” he said.

Gardner and officials in the California attorney general’s office said McDonald’s agreed to publish the ingredient information as part of an agreement negotiated with five fast-food chains: McDonald’s, Burger King, Jack in the Box, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Wendy’s.

They also said McDonald’s was the last of the five to agree.

In California, Fred Register, special assistant to the attorney general, said McDonald’s also violated an agreement calling for a joint public announcement of the fast-food chains’ decision to publish nutrition information.

Register said McDonald’s news announcement “creates the impression that McDonald’s has taken a step independently of its competitors when, in fact, it was the result of very considerable pressure and negotiations directed at the entire industry by attorneys general offices in several states.”